A powerline statusline for Claude Code: segments, themes, and a live TUI configurator in a single native binary.

Documentation & live demo

Install

Note

Powerline glyphs need a Nerd Font, or switch to the ascii style. On macOS: brew install --cask font-hack-nerd-font (the font used in the screenshots).

# verifies SHA256, plus build provenance when gh is available
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/micschr0/claudebar/main/install.sh | bash

Homebrew

# verifies SHA256
brew install micschr0/tap/claudebar

mise

# verifies SHA256 and build provenance automatically
mise use -g github:micschr0/claudebar

pnpm

# same per-platform package, installable with any npm-registry package manager
pnpm add -g @micschr0/claudebar

Then wire it into Claude Code. It shows a diff, asks before writing, and backs up the old file:

claudebar setup

What each install method verifies

Every method checks the SHA256 of the downloaded archive. Only some also verify build provenance, which proves that this repo's release.yml built the binary. A matching hash on its own does not.

Method	SHA256	Build provenance
install.sh	✓ fatal on mismatch	~ needs gh, authenticated
Homebrew	✓	✗
mise	✓	✓ automatic
npm / pnpm	✓ (ships verified binary)	✗
claudebar-installer.sh (hosted)	✓	✗

_{✓ verified, ~ conditional, ✗ not checked}

[!NOTE] The npm/pnpm packages ship the already-attested release binaries (built and provenance-signed by release.yml, then repackaged unchanged). The package itself carries no npm registry provenance, since that would attest the repackaging workflow rather than the build. What install.sh checks is the release.yml provenance on the binaries themselves.

install.sh treats a checksum mismatch as fatal; a provenance error only warns. It scopes trust to release.yml via gh attestation verify --signer-workflow. To verify a download by hand:

gh attestation verify claudebar-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz \
  --repo micschr0/claudebar \
  --signer-workflow micschr0/claudebar/.github/workflows/release.yml

Review the script first

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/micschr0/claudebar/main/install.sh -o install.sh
claude -p "Audit this script for anything unsafe, then summarize what it does" < install.sh
bash install.sh

Beta channel

Prereleases (tagged e.g. 2026.7.6-beta.1) ship to a separate Homebrew formula, so brew upgrade keeps stable users on stable:

brew install micschr0/tap/claudebar-beta

Or via the script:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/micschr0/claudebar/main/install.sh | CLAUDEBAR_CHANNEL=beta bash

micschr0/tap/claudebar always tracks stable; claudebar-beta follows the latest prerelease. Back to stable:

brew uninstall micschr0/tap/claudebar-beta && brew install micschr0/tap/claudebar

What it looks like

Colors shift as usage crosses 50% and 80%:

All segments. Four are off by default (dev-context, burn, clock, update-notice):

Configure

claudebar config

Full-screen TUI: live preview, theme and style pickers, threshold sliders. ? for keys, s saves, q quits.

Or edit the TOML at ~/.config/claudebar/config.toml directly (claudebar edit):

theme = "tokyo-night"
style = "powerline"
segments = ["directory", "git", "model", "context", "lines", "rate-limits", "cost", "duration"]

[thresholds]
warn = 50   # bar turns yellow
crit = 80   # bar turns red

CLI reference

Command	Action
claudebar / claudebar render	Read session JSON from stdin, write ANSI statusline to stdout
claudebar config	Launch the TUI configurator
claudebar setup	Wire claudebar into Claude Code's settings.json
claudebar list	List built-in themes and styles
claudebar doctor	Diagnose font, git, config, and PATH issues
claudebar update	Check for a newer claudebar release (manual; never runs during rendering)

More commands and flags: claudebar --help.

Checking for updates

claudebar update compares your installed version against the newest GitHub release. You run it yourself, and the render path never blocks on the network, so the statusline cannot stall on it.

It compares against the newest stable release. Pass --channel beta to include prereleases.

claudebar update
# claudebar 2026.8.15 (stable channel)
# Update available: 2026.8.16 (stable)
# Install/update: https://github.com/micschr0/claudebar#installation

Add the update-notice segment to see the result inline, as an "↑ 2026.8.20" badge on the statusline. It is off by default and stays that way — claudebar sync, which adds segments introduced by newer versions, deliberately skips this one and only tells you it exists. Add it to segments yourself to enable it.

Enabling it opts into a background check, started at most once every 24 hours by a detached child process that writes a small cache next to your config file. The statusline itself only reads that cache and never waits for the check. With the segment disabled the render path does no network or cache I/O at all; an explicit claudebar update still writes the cache, since that is you asking for a check.

Exit codes: 0 = up to date, 1 = check failed (e.g. no network), 2 = update available. In set -e shells or &&-chains, where exit 2 reads as an error, add --check: it still prints the result but exits 0 on success.

Uninstall

brew uninstall claudebar
# or: rm ~/.claude/claudebar   # script install
# or: pnpm remove -g @micschr0/claudebar   # npm / pnpm install

Then remove the statusLine entry from ~/.claude/settings.json, and ~/.config/claudebar/ if you want the config gone too.

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More: documentation & live demo · build from source · contributing · contributing a theme · internals wiki · changelog · verifying releases · report an issue

License

MIT