Budgetclaw

budgetclaw

RoninForge BudgetClaw is a local spend monitor for Claude Code that tracks token cost per project and per git branch and stops a runaway agent before a budget cap is breached. It is MIT licensed, runs entirely on your machine, and requires no API keys.

Part of [RoninForge.org](https://roninforge.org), an independent open-source workshop that keeps dated, reproducible records of the AI developer tooling economy.

BudgetClaw watches the JSONL session logs Claude Code already writes under `~/.claude/projects`, attributes each response's token cost to a `{project, branch}` pair, and when a cap is breached it sends SIGTERM to the Claude Code process and pushes a phone alert via ntfy.

**Zero API keys. Zero prompts. Zero latency added.** budgetclaw never touches API traffic. It reads local log files that already exist on your disk.

Docs, the ccusage comparison, the team guide and the pricing methodology: ****

Install

One-liner

curl -fsSL https://roninforge.org/get | sh

Via Homebrew (macOS, Linux)

brew install roninforge/tap/budgetclaw

From source

git clone https://github.com/RoninForge/budgetclaw.git
cd budgetclaw
make build
./bin/budgetclaw version

Via `go install`

go install github.com/RoninForge/budgetclaw/cmd/budgetclaw@latest

Quick start

# first-run: creates config + state dirs, prints paths
budgetclaw init

# cap the "myapp" project at $5/day across all branches, kill on breach
budgetclaw limit set --project myapp --period daily --cap 5.00 --action kill

# cap the "feature/expensive" branch specifically at $1/day, warn only
budgetclaw limit set --project myapp --branch "feature/expensive" --period daily --cap 1.00 --action warn

# show today's spend by project and branch
budgetclaw status

# run the watcher in the foreground
budgetclaw watch

Configuration

budgetclaw follows the [XDG Base Directory Specification](https://specific