claude-watcher 0.4.2

Statusline + notification hook + cross-window tray watcher for Claude Code.

claude-code-statusline

Statusline + notification hook + external watcher for Claude Code.

Tells you at a glance which of your parallel Claude Code windows is busy, idle, or waiting for permission — and surfaces toast notifications when one needs your attention.

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Why

When you run several Claude Code sessions in parallel terminals, it's easy to lose track of which one is thinking, which one finished, and which is blocked on a permission prompt. The default TUI doesn't surface that across windows. This adds:

• A persistent statusline at the bottom of each Claude Code window with project name, busy indicator, model, context %, rate-limit usage, and elapsed-since-last-activity.
• A notification hook that fires distinct sounds and Windows toasts (with project name in the title) when a window wants you.

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What it looks like

Segment	Meaning
project-name	session_name if set, else cwd basename. Truncates with … to fit terminal width.
● / ● THINKING / ● STUCK / ● WAITING	Session classification. Green ● = busy (fresh). Yellow ● THINKING = busy + silent ≥60s. Red ● STUCK = silent ≥180s. Red ● WAITING = permission prompt pending. Hidden = idle. See Status colors for full details.
Opus 4.7 1M	Model display name; 1M suffix when 1M context is enabled.
13% (131k)	Context used: percent + token count. Dim → yellow ≥60 → bold yellow ≥80 → red ≥90.
5h:19% 7d:48%	Rate-limit usage (5-hour / 7-day). Dim → yellow → red as it climbs.
last 12:34:56	Local wall-clock time of the last transcript event. Dim if <30s old at last paint → yellow <2min → red ≥2min. Frozen between Claude Code repaints by design — comparing a stale wall clock to your own is self-evidently stale, whereas a frozen "Ns" counter would lie. Run watcher.py for real-time ticking.

Status colors

Both the statusline ● and the tray icon share the same colors and thresholds.

Color	Statusline	Tray	Trigger	What to do
Green	●	green dot / count	Session is busy and the last non-thinking transcript entry is <60s old	Nothing — Claude is healthily working
Yellow	● THINKING	yellow dot / count	Busy, last non-thinking entry is ≥60s old	Wait — likely a long thinking block or a slow tool call. Heads-up, not yet a problem
Red	● STUCK	red dot / count	Busy + silent ≥180s	Probably hung — consider interrupting
Red	● WAITING	red dot / count	status=waiting (permission prompt pending)	Approve/deny the dialog in the Claude Code window
Gray	(hidden)	gray dot / 0-count	No sessions, or all sessions are idle	Nothing

Thresholds: SLOW_THRESHOLD=60s (yellow) and STUCK_THRESHOLD=180s (red), defined once in watcher.py and mirrored in statusline.py so the two surfaces never disagree.

"Last non-thinking entry": both surfaces walk the transcript JSONL backwards and skip subtype=="thinking" rows, so extended-thinking writes don't mask a session that's been silently reasoning. Falls back to file mtime if no parseable non-thinking entry exists (brand-new turn).

Where each color is computed:

• Statusline ● — statusline.py:render_status, computed only when Claude Code repaints (events only; the refreshInterval timer does not fire during silent stretches).
• Tray icon — watcher.py:overall_severity, computed every 300ms by the background poll loop, showing the loudest severity across all your Claude Code windows.

The notification hook adds:

• Permission prompt → warning beep + toast titled [project] Permission needed
• Idle prompt (turn ended, awaiting input) → chime + toast titled [project] Awaiting your input
• Elicitation dialog → asterisk beep + toast titled [project] Question

The external watcher (watcher.py) is the answer to "is anything actually stuck?" — Claude Code refreshes the in-TUI statusline sparsely during silent work, so the dot can lie. Run the watcher in a separate terminal and it polls every session on its own schedule, flips sessions from ● BUSY → ⌛ THINK → ⚠ STUCK as transcripts stay silent, and beeps when a session escalates to STUCK or WAIT:

Claude Code Watcher · 2026-05-20 11:45:12
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
    PID  STATE       PROJECT                           ELAPSED
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  25632  ● BUSY      Add progress indicator                 3s
  28104  ⌛ THINK     Other Project                       1m22s
  31840  ⚠ STUCK     Doing Hard Thing                    4m05s
  19200  ▶ WAIT      Yet Another                         12s
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Run with:

python watcher.py                 # default 300ms poll
python watcher.py --no-sound      # silent
python watcher.py --interval 1.0  # slower poll

Tray-icon mode (no extra terminal pane)

If you don't want the watcher TUI eating a terminal pane, run it headless with a system tray icon driven by the same classification logic:

pip install "claude-watcher[tray]"
claude-watcher --tray

Or from a checkout (no install), using the same venv:

.venv/Scripts/python -m claude_watcher.watcher --tray   # Windows
.venv/bin/python    -m claude_watcher.watcher --tray    # macOS / Linux

The tray icon is a single colored circle whose color = the loudest severity across all your sessions (see Status colors).

Tooltip lists each session's classification. When a terminal window is the OS foreground, the most-recently-active session is sorted to the top with a ▶ marker — proxy for "the session you're probably looking at" (we can't read which tab inside Windows Terminal is active without UI Automation).

Right-click menu — Open action (opens the info window), session-summary entries (read-only, no action — present for visual reference with normal-color text), and Quit.

Info window — double-click the tray icon (or pick Open from the menu) to pop a small borderless light-themed window listing all sessions. Each session shows:

• Top row — colored dot, project name, status word; the focused session is bolded with ▶.
• Detail row (muted, monospace) — cpu N% (claude.exe CPU; — until psutil has two samples), age Xm Ys (transcript-mtime age, skipping thinking entries), and running: <tool> if an assistant/tool_use is still waiting on its tool_result. The CPU + tool combo disambiguates the silent-but-busy case: high CPU = thinking hard; near-zero with a tool name = blocked on that tool; near-zero with no tool = likely stuck on the API.

Auto-refreshes every ~700ms while open; closes on focus-loss or Esc. Rendered by a child process so it doesn't block the tray. CPU% requires the optional psutil dep (uv pip install psutil).

Toast on escalation — when a session crosses into ⚠ STUCK or ▶ WAIT, the watcher fires a desktop toast ([project] STUCK or [project] WAIT) in addition to the audible beep. Same backend per platform: WinRT on Windows, osascript on macOS, notify-send on Linux.

Beeps on STUCK/WAIT escalations (use --no-sound to silence).

Autostart on login

Register the tray watcher to launch automatically:

Windows: writes HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\ClaudeCodeWatcher pointing at a VBScript wrapper that invokes pythonw.exe -m claude_watcher.watcher --tray with a hidden window (uv-built venvs ship pythonw.exe as a trampoline shim that flashes a console without the wrapper).

claude-watcher --install-autostart

macOS: writes ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.anthropic.claude-code-watcher.plist and launchctl loads it immediately, so the watcher starts now and at every login. The watcher hides itself from the Dock via NSApplicationActivationPolicyAccessory; only the menu-bar icon shows.

claude-watcher --install-autostart

First time the watcher fires a toast, macOS will prompt you to allow notifications for the Python interpreter (System Settings → Notifications). Grant it once.

Linux: writes ~/.config/autostart/claude-code-watcher.desktop (XDG autostart). Most desktop environments honor it on next login.

claude-watcher --install-autostart

To remove on any platform: claude-watcher --uninstall-autostart.

Auto-start when Claude opens (alternative to OS-login)

If you'd rather the tray only run while you're actually using Claude — not idle in the background between reboots — register a Claude Code SessionStart hook instead. The hook fires when you open a Claude session; a tiny launcher (claude_watcher.launch_watcher) checks via psutil whether a tray watcher is already alive and spawns one only if not. Subsequent session opens are no-ops.

claude-watcher --register-claude-hook

This adds an entry under hooks.SessionStart in ~/.claude/settings.json (with a .bak of the previous file). On Windows a small VBScript wrapper (~/.claude/_claude_watcher_hook.vbs) is generated so the launcher invocation is fully hidden; on macOS/Linux the command runs python -m claude_watcher.launch_watcher directly. Idempotent — re-running detects the existing entry and does nothing.

	OS-login autostart	SessionStart hook
Trigger	At every login	First Claude session after a reboot
Watcher running when no Claude windows open	Yes (~30 MB RAM idle)	No
Startup latency on first Claude open	None (already running)	~300 ms (pystray spin-up)
Setup command	--install-autostart	--register-claude-hook

Pick one. To remove the hook: claude-watcher --unregister-claude-hook.

Configurable thresholds

Override the classification thresholds via env vars (same vars read by claude_watcher.statusline so the two surfaces never disagree):

Env var	Default	Effect
CLAUDE_WATCHER_SLOW_SECONDS	60	Age at which a busy session flips to ⌛ THINK (yellow)
CLAUDE_WATCHER_STUCK_SECONDS	180	Age at which it flips to ⚠ STUCK (red)

Manual launch (without autostart)

Windows — use pythonw.exe (no console window):

pythonw -m claude_watcher.watcher --tray

macOS — claude-watcher --tray works but you'll see a Dock icon while it runs. Either use --install-autostart (which hides the Dock icon) or nohup to detach from the terminal:

nohup claude-watcher --tray > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Linux — same nohup pattern as macOS, or use systemctl --user for a real service.

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Requirements

• Statusline + watcher: any OS with Python 3.10+ and Claude Code.
• Notification hook: cross-platform via auto-detected backend.
  • Windows 10/11 — toasts via WinRT (needs the bundled AppId registration); sounds via winsound.MessageBeep.
  • macOS — toasts via osascript display notification; sounds via afplay against /System/Library/Sounds/.
  • Linux — toasts via notify-send (install libnotify); sounds via paplay (PulseAudio) or aplay (ALSA), falling back to terminal bell.

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Install

Via pip (recommended)

pip install "claude-watcher[tray]"          # tray extras pull pystray + pillow + psutil
claude-statusline --help                    # entry-point script for the statusline
claude-watcher --tray                       # entry-point script for the tray watcher

Then point Claude Code's statusLine.command at claude-statusline instead of python ~/.claude/statusline.py. To set up auto-start, run claude-watcher --install-autostart (OS-login) or claude-watcher --register-claude-hook (start on Claude session open) — see Autostart on login for the OS-specific details.

Automated (Windows, git checkout, legacy)

git clone https://github.com/EranDaniel98/claude-code-statusline.git
cd claude-code-statusline
.\scripts\install.ps1
# or .\scripts\install.ps1 -DryRun  to preview without writing anything

The script:

1. Copies statusline.py and hooks/notify.py into ~/.claude/ (backing up any existing files).
2. Registers the Anthropic.ClaudeCode AppId so Windows actually displays toasts (Windows silently drops toasts from unregistered AppIds).
3. Deep-merges settings.example.json into ~/.claude/settings.json with a .bak of your old file. Existing unrelated settings (other hooks, custom rules) are preserved.

Restart any open Claude Code window after install.

Manual (any platform)

1. Copy files into ~/.claude/:

   Windows (PowerShell):

   Copy-Item statusline.py "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\statusline.py"
   New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force -Path "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\hooks" | Out-Null
   Copy-Item hooks\notify.py "$env:USERPROFILE\.claude\hooks\notify.py"
   

   macOS / Linux:

   mkdir -p ~/.claude/hooks
   cp statusline.py ~/.claude/statusline.py
   cp hooks/notify.py ~/.claude/hooks/notify.py
   

2. (Windows only) Register the toast AppId:

   .\scripts\register-app-id.ps1
   

3. Merge settings.example.json into ~/.claude/settings.json (the included helper does a deep-merge with backup, on any OS):

   python scripts/merge_settings.py settings.example.json
   

4. Restart any open Claude Code window.

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Verify

From the repo root (no install required):

python tests/test_statusline.py    # state matrix; should print "9/9 passed"
python tests/test_watcher.py       # watcher logic; should print "7/7 passed"
python tests/test_notify.py        # fires 3 toasts + 3 sounds (manual confirm)
python tests/test_colors.py        # renders the dot/WAIT states

Then open a Claude Code window and confirm:

• Green ● appears between project name and model while Claude is responding.
• Dot disappears within ~1s after the response finishes.

See tests/CHECKLIST.md for cross-window scenarios.

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Environment variables

Variable	Effect
CLAUDE_QUIET=1	Silence the notification hook (no sounds, no toasts).
CLAUDE_STATUSLINE_DEBUG=1	Dump the raw statusline payload to ~/.claude/statusline-payload.json.
CLAUDE_SESSIONS_DIR=<path>	Override the sessions dir read by the statusline + watcher (default ~/.claude/sessions). Useful for tests and isolated environments.
COLUMNS=N	Force terminal width (otherwise autodetected via CONOUT$ on Windows).

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Troubleshooting

Toasts don't appear (sounds work). The Anthropic.ClaudeCode AppId isn't registered. Run .\scripts\register-app-id.ps1. After registration, "Claude Code" appears in Settings → System → Notifications → Notifications from apps and other senders — make sure it's toggled on, and that Focus / Do not disturb is off.

Sounds all sound identical. Windows' default sound scheme maps Asterisk / Default Beep / Critical Stop to the same .wav. Customize the events in Sound Control Panel → Sounds if you want distinct audio cues.

Dot never appears. Verify Python is on PATH and the statusLine command in settings.json points to the right path. Run python ~/.claude/statusline.py < ~/.claude/statusline-payload.json (after setting CLAUDE_STATUSLINE_DEBUG=1 once to generate the payload) to see direct output.

Project name truncated even on a wide terminal. Terminal width detection isn't picking up your console. Set COLUMNS=120 (or whatever your width is) in your shell profile.

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Known limitations

• Sparse refresh during silent work. Claude Code doesn't fire statusline refreshes on the refreshInterval timer reliably during long thinking turns or long tool calls — repaints fire on state events (start/end of turn, permission prompts). The dot accurately reflects state at the last paint, not in real time. Run watcher.py in a separate terminal to get reliable real-time "stuck" detection; it polls on its own schedule and doesn't depend on Claude Code's repaint cadence.
• Toast latency on Windows. hooks/notify.py spawns a fresh PowerShell per notification (~300ms startup). Fire-and-forget via Popen so it doesn't block, but the toast itself appears ~300ms after the event. A persistent helper would be cleaner — future work.

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Design notes

• Statusline reads stdin payload Claude Code provides on every render: session id, transcript path, cwd, model, context window, rate limits.
• Busy state comes from ~/.claude/sessions/<PID>.json — Claude Code's status field there is the authoritative liveness signal (idle / busy / waiting).
• Last activity is the timestamp of the last non-thinking JSONL entry, rendered as local wall-clock time. Extended-thinking blocks land in the JSONL and update file mtime, so naive getmtime would hide a session that's been silently reasoning for minutes. The statusline (and watcher.py's classification, by the same logic) walks the tail of the JSONL backwards, skips subtype=="thinking" entries, and uses the previous entry's timestamp. Falls back to file mtime when no parseable non-thinking entries exist. Color buckets (dim/yellow/red) still classify freshness at the last paint.
• Toast AppId is registered in HKCU:\SOFTWARE\Classes\AppUserModelId\Anthropic.ClaudeCode — Microsoft's documented way to register a standalone notifier without needing a Start Menu shortcut.
• Notification backends are platform-detected. hooks/notify.py defines a NotificationBackend ABC with WindowsBackend / MacOSBackend / LinuxBackend implementations selected via sys.platform. Adding a new platform is one new class.
• The watcher polls externally, free of Claude Code's repaint quirks. It scans ~/.claude/sessions/*.json plus the matching transcript JSONLs in ~/.claude/projects/<encoded-cwd>/, classifies each session, and beeps when severity escalates (debounced — won't beep continuously while a session sits in WAIT).

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License

MIT — see LICENSE.