Ai Vampire Guard

AI Vampire Guard

**Monitor your Claude Code burn rate. Prevent AI-amplified burnout.**


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Steve Yegge coined the term "AI Vampire" — when AI tools amplify your productivity so much that you burn through your energy without realizing it. You finish the day having shipped more than ever, but you're completely drained.

AI Vampire Guard makes your cognitive load visible. It reads your Claude Code session logs and produces a daily burn-rate score from 0 to 100, visualized as a gauge with three zones:

Zone	Score	What It Means
GREEN	0–39	Sustainable pace
AMBER	40–69	Watch your energy
RED	70–100	Overdrive — take a break

The score isn't just token count. It weighs six factors: output volume, tool call intensity, session depth, parallel sessions, task complexity, and your personal cognitive engagement.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+ (python3 --version)
• uv — the fast Python package manager (curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh)
• Claude Code — reads session logs from ~/.claude/projects/

No other dependencies. The script uses PEP 723 inline metadata — `uv run` installs `click` and `rich` automatically on first run.

Install (60 seconds)

Option A: Automatic Install (Recommended)

Run the installer — it downloads the script and config from GitHub, places them in `~/.claude/scripts/`, and configures Claude Code hooks:

curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cbruyndoncx/ai-vampire-guard/main/install_vampire_guard.py \
  | uv run -

Preview first with `--dry-run`, or remove later with `--uninstall`:

uv run ~/.claude/scripts/install_vampire_guard.py --dry-run
uv run ~/.claude/scripts/install_vampire_guard.py --uninstall

Option B: Manual Install

Download the script and config yourself, then configure hooks manually (see [Automatic Monitoring](#automatic-monitoring-hooks) below):