Yesterday I shared a small tool I was working on with friends called TokenBar and the response honestly surprised me.
When I started building it, the goal was simple.
While working with the OpenAI and Claude APIs I kept running into the same problem during development: token usage is basically invisible while you're actually coding.
You run prompts.
You test agents.
You debug requests.
Everything works… but you have no quick way to see how many tokens you're burning until you check dashboards later.
After accidentally burning more tokens than expected during prompt experiments a few times, I wanted something extremely simple: a small indicator that shows token usage live while I'm developing.
So I built TokenBar, a macOS menu bar utility that shows token usage in real time when working with LLM APIs.
The idea is basically to treat token usage like a system metric — something you can glance at while you're coding.
No dashboards.
No heavy analytics tools.
Just a small counter sitting in the menu bar.
I shared it yesterday and ended up getting 100+ installs in the first day, which I definitely didn't expect.
A few developers have already said it's been useful for:
• prompt experimentation
• debugging LLM agents
• keeping an eye on token costs while coding
Still early, but it's been really interesting seeing how people are using it.
If anyone here builds with LLM APIs and wants to check it out:
Would also love feedback or ideas for improving it.
Top comments (2)
Visiting you page, three things came to mind. First, I am not going to download and install anything that I have no clue as to how it looks. Second, I am not going to pay for a tool I have no idea if I like or not. And third, why don't I just point my own agent to your site and ask it to make this thing for myself. Even if I use $5 worth of tokens, it will be in my preferred language, looking the way I want it to look and giving me full access to the source.
Nice one! I work with LLM APIs daily and the "check the dashboard later" problem is very real.
Congrats on 100+ installs on day one, well deserved. Good luck with the project!