claude-busy-monitor

Live view of your Claude Code sessions on your machine: which one is busy, which one is asking for your input, which one is idle (with cumulative token totals).

Ships as a claude-busy-monitor command and a Python library (get_sessions(), get_state_counts()).

1. Why

When you run many Claude Code sessions in parallel, keeping an overview of their states is a job in itself. You want every session working; every minute it isn't is time you don't get back:

• A busy session is the productive one; Claude is doing the work you asked for.
• An idle session is waiting for your next prompt; feed it.
• An asking session is fully stalled on a menu (most often a permission prompt); answer it to unstuck Claude.

claude-busy-monitor surfaces the asking sessions instantly so they don't sit there burning your wall-clock.

2. Scope

What it sees and does:

• Local Claude Code sessions of the running user.
• Their live state (busy / asking / idle) and cumulative token totals.

What it deliberately does not do:

• No API calls: works entirely from local files; no quota burn, no auth needed.
• No web or desktop sessions: those don't write the local probe files this tool reads.
• No mutation, no daemon, no IPC: read-only, ephemeral, nothing to start or supervise.

3. Features

4. Install

Python 3.11+ is the only prerequisite.

4.1. As a command (most users)

pipx install claude-busy-monitor
# or, with uv:
uv tool install claude-busy-monitor

Both put claude-busy-monitor in ~/.local/bin/ inside an isolated per-tool venv; no risk to system Python, clean uninstall. If you have neither: apt install pipx (Debian/Ubuntu).

Avoid pip install claude-busy-monitor system-wide on modern distros (PEP 668 marks system Python as managed; you'd hit externally-managed-environment and --break-system-packages is a last-resort override, not a recommendation).

4.2. As a library

In your project's virtualenv:

pip install claude-busy-monitor
# or, with uv:
uv add claude-busy-monitor

Then from claude_busy_monitor import get_sessions, get_state_counts, ClaudeState (full API in README-LIBRARY.md).

4.3. From source (contributors)

git clone https://github.com/pbauermeister/claude-busy-monitor.git
cd claude-busy-monitor
make require        # installs uv if missing (idempotent)
make venv-activate  # creates .venv, syncs dev deps, opens an activated shell
# or, to install the local source globally for end-to-end use:
make install        # = uv tool install .

For the full list of make targets, see README-LIBRARY.md.

5. Usage

5.1. Command

claude-busy-monitor               # one-shot listing
watch claude-busy-monitor         # live refresh

The output is one summary line followed by one line per session. Each session line reads:

5.2. Library

The same data is exposed as a Python library; build your own tmux notifier, status-bar widget, or custom dashboard.

from claude_busy_monitor import get_sessions, ClaudeState

asking = [s for s in get_sessions() if s.state == ClaudeState.ASKING]
for s in asking:
    print(f"waiting: {s.path} ({s.id[:12]})")

Full API and make reference: README-LIBRARY.md.

6. How it works

claude-busy-monitor reads two on-disk sources that Claude Code itself writes:

1. ~/.claude/sessions/<pid>.json: one probe file per live session, with the authoritative raw status field (busy / shell / idle / waiting).
2. ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/<sid>.jsonl: the per-session transcript, used only to total token usage.

State classification is a fixed lookup that synthesises those raw statuses into the three user-facing states (busy / asking / idle); the mapping is many-to-one — several raw statuses may collapse into one state (e.g. shell → busy). No inference, no heuristics. Token usage sums the four usage categories per assistant entry.

For the full design (assumptions the classifier depends on, diagnostic recipes for when something looks wrong, and the repair playbook), see README-STATE-DETECTION.md.

7. Compatibility

• Operating system: Linux only (relies on /proc/<pid>/comm and /proc/<pid>/exe); macOS is not supported yet. Help welcome: please open a Discussion before any issue or PR.
• Claude Code: v2.1.119 introduced the status field this tool relies on; older versions are silently dropped. /exit and claude --resume <sessionId> will migrate them.

8. License

MIT; see CHANGES.md for the version history.