cctv — Claude Code Token Visualizer

A real-time terminal UI that visualizes token usage from your Claude Code sessions — input tokens, output tokens, cost, and cache hit rates — all as live histograms directly in your terminal.

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How it works

cctv does not intercept terminal output or wrap Claude Code.

Instead, it tails the .jsonl usage log files that Claude Code writes locally, parses each request event, aggregates them into time buckets, and renders the result as a live histogram.

Claude Code JSONL logs
        ↓
  RequestUsage events
        ↓
  Time-bucket aggregation
        ↓
  TUI histogram (Textual)

This design means cctv runs completely independently — open it in a second terminal alongside your Claude Code session.

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Features

• Real-time histograms — input and output token consumption per time bucket
• Per-model cumulative stats — total tokens, estimated cost in USD
• Cache hit tracking — per-request and cumulative cache hit rates
• Dynamic Y-axis — auto-scaling with "nice" tick marks
• Configurable time window — zoom in (1 s buckets) or zoom out (1 min buckets)
• Custom pricing — override default model prices with a JSON file
• Zero dependencies on Claude Code internals — reads only local log files

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Requirements

• Python 3.9+
• Claude Code installed and having run at least one session (to produce .jsonl logs)

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Installation

From PyPI (recommended)

pip install claude-code-token-visualizer

or with pip3:

pip3 install claude-code-token-visualizer

With pipx (isolated environment)

pipx install claude-code-token-visualizer

From source

git clone https://github.com/dabitk/claude-code-token-visualizer.git
cd claude-code-token-visualizer
pip install -e .

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Quick Start

Open a second terminal while Claude Code is running:

cctv

That's it. cctv automatically discovers Claude Code's log directory and starts displaying token usage in real time.

Navigation:

Key	Action
↑ / ↓	Navigate menu
Enter	Select / toggle option
q	Quit

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CLI Options

All options can also be set via environment variables (prefix CCTV_).

Flag	Env var	Default	Description
--bucket <N>	CCTV_BUCKET_SECONDS	10	Time bucket width. Accepts 10, 10s, or 2m
--window <N>	CCTV_WINDOW_SIZE	120	Number of buckets shown (total time = bucket × window)
--refresh <N>	CCTV_REFRESH_SECONDS	1.0	UI refresh interval in seconds
--debounce-ms <N>	CCTV_DEBOUNCE_MS	250	File-change debounce delay in milliseconds
--pricing <path>	CCTV_PRICING_FILE	built-in	Path to a custom pricing JSON file
--hide-totals	CCTV_SHOW_TOTALS=0	totals on	Hide the cumulative totals panel
--hide-cache-hit	CCTV_SHOW_CACHE_HIT=0	cache on	Hide cache hit rate columns
--log-level <LEVEL>	CCTV_LOG_LEVEL	INFO	Logging level (DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, …)

Examples

# 1-second buckets over a 3-minute window
cctv --bucket 1s --window 180

# 1-minute buckets, no cache stats
cctv --bucket 1m --hide-cache-hit

# Custom log directory
CCTV_USAGE_GLOB=~/.claude:~/work/.claude cctv

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Custom Pricing

By default, cctv uses built-in pricing for current Claude models. To override:

cctv --pricing my_pricing.json

The file must be a JSON object mapping model name substrings to per-million-token prices:

{
  "claude-sonnet-4-6": { "input": 3.0,  "output": 15.0 },
  "claude-opus-4-6":   { "input": 15.0, "output": 75.0 },
  "claude-haiku-4-5":  { "input": 0.8,  "output": 4.0  }
}

Matching is done by substring, so "sonnet" matches "claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022".

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Log File Location

cctv searches for .jsonl usage files in the following directories (in order):

1. ~/.claude/
2. ~/.local/share/claude/
3. ~/.local/share/claude-code/

To use a custom path, set CCTV_USAGE_GLOB:

CCTV_USAGE_GLOB=/custom/path/to/claude cctv

Multiple paths can be separated by :.

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Project Structure

src/cctv/
├── cli.py              # Entry point
├── config.py           # CLI argument parsing
├── paths.py            # Log directory discovery
├── pricing.py          # Model pricing database
│
├── domain/             # Data models & state
│   ├── models.py       # RequestUsage, BucketPoint, ModelTotal, AppState
│   ├── events.py       # Event types
│   └── state.py        # StateStore
│
├── ingest/             # Data collection
│   ├── locator.py      # Find .jsonl files
│   ├── tailer.py       # Incremental file reader
│   ├── parser.py       # JSON → RequestUsage
│   └── dedupe.py       # Duplicate event filter
│
├── aggregate/          # Aggregation
│   ├── bucketer.py     # Time-bucket aggregation
│   └── totals.py       # Per-model cumulative stats
│
├── monitor/            # File monitoring
│   ├── watcher.py      # Watchdog-based file observer
│   └── scheduler.py    # Debounce scheduler
│
├── tui/                # Terminal UI (Textual)
│   ├── app.py          # Main Textual app
│   ├── widgets.py      # Custom widgets
│   └── render.py       # Histogram renderer
│
└── util/               # Utilities
    ├── time.py
    ├── math.py
    └── logging.py

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please open an issue first for significant changes.

# Install dev dependencies and run tests
pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest tests/

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License

MIT