drpwchen

Claude Pacer — Development skill for Claude Code

Development community

Statusline + budget guard + pacing verdict for Claude Code usage limits — the statusline is for you, the guard is for Claude, the verdict is for your agents.

How to install Claude Pacer

This entry records only its repository, not the path inside it, so there is no exact command to give. Open drpwchen/claude-pacer and copy the folder into ~/.claude/skills/, or the file into ~/.claude/agents/.

What Claude Pacer does

Statusline + budget guard + pacing verdict for Claude Code usage limits — the statusline is for you, the guard is for Claude, the verdict is for your agents.

Alternatives in Development

Codenotch — A macOS app that pins usage limits from Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and Antigravity to a screen edge 1.3k ★
Claude Auto Resume — A shell script utility that automatically resumes Claude CLI tasks when usage limits are lifted 732 ★
Claude Dashboard — Comprehensive status line plugin for Claude Code with context usage, API rate limits, and cost tracking 258 ★

README

claude-pacer

A statusline + budget guard + pacing verdict for Claude Code usage limits.

[繁體中文說明 → README.zh-TW.md](README.zh-TW.md)

Refactor auth middleware │ 5h ▓▓▓┃░░░ 42%·2h13m │ 7d ▓▓▓▓┃▓░ 71%·3d2h │ Ctx ▓▓░░░░ 34% │ Fable 5·high
Refactor a…│5h▓▓░░42%│7d▓▓▓░71%│Ctx34%│Fable5·hi      ← same line on a narrow terminal

There are many great Claude Code statuslines out there — [ccusage](https://github.com/ccusage/ccusage), [ccstatusline](https://github.com/sirmalloc/ccstatusline), [CCometixLine](https://github.com/Haleclipse/CCometixLine), [cc-statusline](https://github.com/chongdashu/cc-statusline), [claude-powerline](https://github.com/Owloops/claude-powerline), … — use whichever you like. This one exists because a statusline alone never stopped an autonomous agent from blowing through a rate limit at 2 AM. claude-pacer is three layers that share one data file:

statusline.cjs — what you see: 5h / 7d usage, context-window fullness, optional conversation topic. Numbers or bars.
budget-guard.cjs — what Claude sees: a hook that injects wrap-up instructions into the model's context at 85% / 93% usage, so long autonomous runs wind down gracefully instead of dying mid-task.
usage_verdict.py — what agents should run instead of interpreting raw numbers: a one-line GO / PACE / STOP verdict that encodes the reset arithmetic agents keep getting wrong.

Why this exists

It started with overnight runs dying mid-task: hand Claude Code a long autonomous job, go to bed, and find it cut off at 2 AM by the 5-hour usage window — context stranded, work half-done. Plenty of tools auto-send "continue" after the crash; the point here is acting *before* the wall: past 85% Claude stops launching new heavy work, at 93% it finishes the step it's on cleanly and schedules its own resume in the same conversation — no half-written files, no broken mid-operation state to untangle.

The statusline then fixes the small daily frictions