What it does Claude HUD is a plugin for Claude Code that renders a live status line below your prompt. It shows context window usage, active tool calls, running subagents, todo progress, git state, and rate-limit burn — all updated every ~300ms via Claude Code’s native statusline API. No tmux, no sidecar window, just stdin/stdout JSON plumbing.

The interesting bit The README is refreshingly honest about platform papercuts: Linux users hit EXDEV cross-device link errors because /tmp is often tmpfs, and Windows users need Node.js LTS installed or setup silently fails. That level of “we know this is annoying, here’s the exact fix” documentation suggests the author actually uses it daily.

Key highlights

• Native token data from Claude Code, not guesstimated counts; scales to 1M-context sessions
• Parses the transcript JSONL stream for real-time tool/agent/todo activity
• Guided /claude-hud:configure with presets (Full/Essential/Minimal) plus ~40 granular toggles
• Optional Simplified Chinese labels via zh-Hans
• Can snapshot rate-limit data to a local JSON file for other tools to consume

Caveats

• Most useful features (tools, agents, todos, cost, speed) are off by default; the out-of-box experience is just model name + context bar + usage
• Requires a full Claude Code restart on Windows after setup writes config
• README notes this is fundamentally a Claude Code platform limitation, not the plugin’s fault

Verdict Grab it if you live in Claude Code for long sessions and want to stop context-window surprises. Skip if you already have a tmux status bar you’re happy with or you treat Claude as a chatbot, not a coding environment.