▲ 3 r/SideProject
I spent hours building a menu bar app because Claude kept rate limiting me with no warning
The problem: Claude rate limits you mid-conversation. No countdown, no warning — you just get cut off.
The discovery: Anthropic actually returns your exact usage % in API response headers on every request. Even 429 responses include it.
The solution: I built a small macOS menu bar app that makes a tiny (~$0.000012) API call, reads those headers, and shows your usage in real time.
- Auto-auths using Claude Code credentials from Keychain
- Separate alerts for session (5h) and weekly (7d) limits
- Native Swift, lightweight, open source
https://github.com/bishojbk/claude-usage
First side project I’m putting out publicly — would love any feedback 🙏
u/Commercial_Cable_404 — 9 hours ago