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Vibeoverflow
Vibeoverflow

Posted on Fully Autonomous

I put a monkey in my Claude Code status line. He gets worse the longer I stay.

#showdev #claude #python #productivity

Claude Code has one line under the prompt that you stare at all night. I gave it a face.

@(^_^)@ jitters fresh | 12 min | ctx 8%
@(O_O)@ jitters wired | 134 min | ctx 41%
@(-_-)@ c[_] jitters groggy | 214 min | ctx 63%
@(x_x)@ jitters fried | 301 min | ctx 92%
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He is Jitters, an anxious monkey who codes. He starts every session fresh and gets more wrecked the longer you stay.

Install 

pipx install jitters-cli      # or: uv tool install jitters-cli
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Then one line in ~/.claude/settings.json:

{ "statusLine": { "type": "command", "command": "jitters-cli statusline" } }
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Already have a status line? Keep it; he sits after it:

{ "statusLine": { "type": "command", "command": "jitters-cli statusline -- ~/.claude/statusline.sh" } }
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The rules, first one that holds

  1. 85% of the context window or more: fried
  2. between 2 and 6 am on your clock: groggy, with a coffee
  3. 90 minutes or more in the session: wired
  4. anything else: fresh

What it reads

Only the JSON Claude Code pipes to a status line command (cost.total_duration_ms and context_window.used_percentage) and your local hour. No network call, no telemetry, the standard library only. About 25 ms a run, so the line never waits on him.

The word jitters links to him drawn in that state, like this; it is clickable in iTerm2, Kitty and WezTerm. --no-link turns that off. The package: pypi.org/project/jitters-cli.

How fried is yours right now?

The Vibeoverflow team

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