ccline

A fast status line for Claude Code.

This is a personal tool. It's published as a starting point for forking and customizing, not as a general-purpose library. The layout is hardcoded to my preferences — fork it and make it yours.

Why speed matters

Claude Code's status line command runs on every prompt refresh (300ms debounce). A shell script spawns multiple processes per invocation (bash, jq, git), and popular status line tools take 120–800ms. This Rust binary uses native libraries (libgit2, serde) to do the same work in ~16ms — over 2x faster than an equivalent shell script and 8–50x faster than the alternatives.

It's also kinder to your battery. Over a full day of heavy coding, those saved milliseconds add up to less CPU time and less heat. Napkin math puts the annual energy savings at a few cents at Hydro-Québec rates. The API call that just answered your prompt probably used more electricity, but at least your fan stays quiet.

Fork and customize

The layout is hardcoded in src/main.rs (~80 lines). There's no config file by design — editing source and running cargo build --release is faster than parsing config on every invocation.

Claude Code sends a rich JSON payload on stdin with every refresh. This project currently uses only a subset:

Used	Available but unused
workspace.current_dir	model.id
model.display_name	cost.total_lines_added/removed
cost.total_cost_usd	vim.mode, session_id, worktree.*
effort.level	context_window.total_input_tokens/total_output_tokens
context_window.context_window_size
context_window.used_percentage
(git via libgit2)

Fork this repo and add the fields that matter to you. The serde structs in main.rs are easy to extend.

Install

With mise:

mise use -g github:tinnet/ccline

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/tinnet/ccline.git
cd ccline
cargo install --path .

Then add to ~/.claude/settings.json:

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "ccline"
  }
}

Current layout

Segment	Color (Monokai Pro ~60%)	Source
Model	muted green #7a9e56	model.display_name + effort.level (muted yellow)
Path	muted cyan #5a9ea0	Last 2 of workspace.current_dir
Git	muted purple #7a6db0	git2 branch + dirty
Context	muted yellow #b09a42	used_percentage/context_window_size
Cost	light gray	cost.total_cost_usd
Separators	dark gray	\x1b[90m

Benchmarking

mise run bench

Compares the Rust binary against a POSIX shell equivalent and other status line tools using hyperfine.

Command	Mean [ms]	Min [ms]	Max [ms]	Relative
ccline	15.7 ± 1.2	12.4	22.0	1.00
ccline.sh (via bash)	36.8 ± 1.5	32.2	40.3	2.34 ± 0.20
ccline.sh (via sh)	38.6 ± 1.4	34.1	41.4	2.45 ± 0.21
ccline.sh (via zsh)	39.2 ± 1.3	35.6	43.5	2.49 ± 0.21
starship-claude (defaults)	124.1 ± 5.1	118.0	132.1	7.89 ± 0.69
claude-powerline (defaults)	213.7 ± 4.5	206.6	221.8	13.59 ± 1.09
ccstatusline (defaults)	814.1 ± 14.0	797.2	838.0	51.75 ± 4.09

Versions: claude-powerline 1.32.0, ccstatusline 2.2.30, starship-claude (upstream main, vendored in bench/) with starship 1.26.0. Competitor timings include ~55ms of mise x startup overhead.

Optimizations:

• ccline.sh: single jq call (inspired by starship-claude) — 169ms → 111ms (-34%)

See also

• Owloops/claude-powerline — a feature-rich, configurable status line plugin
• sirmalloc/ccstatusline — a Node.js status line with built-in themes
• martinemde/starship-claude — bridges Claude Code data into a Starship prompt

License

MIT

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Made with ❤️ in Montreal