⚡ PulseBar

Your system. Your AI quotas. One glance at the taskbar.

A featherweight Windows widget that lives next to your system tray and shows real-time system stats plus your Claude Code and Codex usage limits — so you never get surprised by a rate limit mid-flow again.

English · 한국어

CPU · RAM · GPU · VRAM · Disk · Net  +  Claude 5h/weekly  +  Codex limits — updated every second, right on your taskbar.

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💡 Why PulseBar?

If you code with Claude Code or Codex, your real constraints are invisible: how much of my 5-hour window is left? When does the weekly limit reset? Is this box swapping while the agent runs? Alt-tabbing to check kills your flow.

PulseBar puts all of it two pixels from your clock — using only official interfaces (Claude Code statusline & OpenTelemetry, codex app-server JSON-RPC). No scraping, no credential access, no Electron eating 400 MB of RAM.

✨ Key Features

• 🖥️ Real-Time System Stats — CPU, RAM, GPU, VRAM, disk activity, and network throughput sampled every second via native Windows APIs (PDH English counters + DXGI). GPU% uses Task-Manager-style busiest-engine aggregation, so the numbers actually match what you expect.

• 🤖 Claude Code Quota, Live — official 5-hour and weekly used-percentages with exact reset times, straight from Claude Code's statusline feed. Values age visibly: anything older than 10 minutes is marked stale, never passed off as current.

• 🧩 Plays Nice with Your Statusline HUD — already running claude-hud or a custom statusline? PulseBar wraps it with your consent: your HUD renders exactly as before while PulseBar reads the same JSON in passing. Original command preserved verbatim, settings.json backed up first, nothing ever overwritten.

• 🚦 Codex Limits + One-Click Login — every rate-limit bucket from the official codex app-server (classified by window duration, so new buckets Just Work), plan, credits, and daily/lifetime token activity. Not logged in? One click opens the official browser login; numbers appear the moment it completes.

• 🧮 Local Token Telemetry — count the actual model tokens (input / output / cache-read / cache-creation) your machine's Claude Code consumes, per model, today and last 7 days — via Claude Code's official OpenTelemetry export into a loopback-only receiver. Set up only by your explicit Claude login click, never automatically. Prompts and responses are never collected. Ever.

• 🐧 Windows + WSL, First-Class — auto-detects claude/codex on Windows and inside every WSL distro. Version-aware: when snap, nvm, and ~/.local/bin installs coexist, PulseBar probes each and picks the newest — stale binaries that break against current server APIs get skipped automatically.

• 📊 Detail Popup — left-click for a 60-second CPU graph, full system breakdown, and per-provider cards with reset times, plan, account, credits, and token totals.

• 🌏 Korean / English UI — switch live in settings.

• 🔒 Privacy by Architecture — loopback-only listeners, DPAPI-protected secrets, zero outbound telemetry, zero credential reads. See Security.

• 🪶 Featherweight — a single WPF app. < 0.5% idle CPU, no admin rights, no services, no Docker, no drama.

📸 Screenshots

🖥️ System tab — 60s CPU graph	🤖 AI usage tab — provider cards

🚀 Quick Start

Requirements: Windows 10/11 x64 · no admin rights · no runtime installs (self-contained build)

Option 1 — Download (recommended)

1. Grab PulseBar-portable-win-x64.zip from the latest release
2. Unzip anywhere → run PulseBar.exe
3. System stats appear on your taskbar instantly ✨

Option 2 — Build from source

git clone https://github.com/Hitbee-dev/PulseBar.git
cd PulseBar
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File packaging/portable/build-portable.ps1
# → artifacts/PulseBar-portable-win-x64.zip (+ SHA-256)

Connect your AI tools (one-time, ~30 seconds)

Step	Action	What happens
1	Tray right-click → Codex login	Official browser login; limits appear on completion
2	Tray right-click → Claude login	One click sets up both the usage bridge (statusline) and local token telemetry (official OTel). An existing HUD is only wrapped after you confirm — declining leaves your settings untouched. Restart Claude Code once

📖 Reading the Bar

CPU 11  RAM 62  GPU 39  VRAM 3.5G  D 0  ↓5K ↑14K
Claude 5h 69 · W 33  |  Codex W 12

Token	Meaning
CPU 11 / RAM 62 / GPU 39	Usage in % (GPU = busiest engine of your primary adapter)
VRAM 3.5G	Dedicated video memory in use
D 0	Disk activity %
↓5K ↑14K	Network down / up per second
Claude 5h 69 · W 33	69% of the 5-hour window, 33% of the weekly window used
Codex W 12	12% of the Codex weekly limit used

Missing data shows — (never a fake 0) · stale data is labeled · hover for reset times & token totals · left-click for details · right-click for the menu.

⚖️ Two Numbers That Must Never Be Confused

Claude weekly usage 33%      ← server-side account quota (official value)
Fable last 7 days 12.4M tok  ← this PC's local telemetry (other devices/web NOT included)

Tools that blend these into one "percentage" are guessing. PulseBar keeps them separate — visually and semantically — always.

🔐 Security & Privacy

Principle	How
No credential access	Codex auth stays inside codex app-server; Claude auth stays inside Claude Code. No cookie or Credential Manager reads
No content collection	Token counts and request metadata only — prompts/responses/transcripts are never read, logged, or stored
Loopback only	OTLP receivers bind 127.0.0.1 with DPAPI-protected bearer secrets
Safe settings edits	Timestamped backup → add-only-when-absent → atomic write. Foreign settings never touched without explicit consent
No phoning home	PulseBar sends zero telemetry anywhere
No admin, no injection	Runs as a normal user; never injects into Explorer or patches the taskbar

Full policy: docs/security.md

🛠️ Development

dotnet build PulseBar.sln -c Release
dotnet test  PulseBar.sln -c Release --no-build   # 190 tests

Project	Role
PulseBar.App	WPF host — overlay, detail popup, tray, DI
PulseBar.Core	Models, provider contract, config, i18n, formatters
PulseBar.Windows	PDH/DXGI metrics, taskbar interop, CLI detection, DPAPI
PulseBar.Providers.Codex	codex app-server JSON-RPC client + login flow
PulseBar.Providers.Claude	Statusline bridge/installer, OTel parser
PulseBar.Bridge	Statusline & WSL OTel helper executable
PulseBar.Storage	SQLite token-event store (idempotent, 30-day retention)

Stack: .NET 8 LTS · WPF · SQLite · xUnit — deliberately no Electron, web views, resident Node/Python daemons, Docker, or admin drivers.

🗺️ Roadmap

• Secondary-monitor taskbar support
• More providers via the Provider Adapter contract — Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Cursor
• Color thresholds & display-item customization UI
• Signed binaries + winget package

Ideas welcome → open an issue

🧰 Troubleshooting

Common fixes (statusline merge, stale data meanings, counter availability) live in docs/troubleshooting.md. Logs: %LOCALAPPDATA%\PulseBar\logs\.

🤝 Contributing

PRs and issues are very welcome! Good first contributions: new provider adapters, translations, taskbar edge cases. Please run dotnet test before submitting.

📄 License

MIT © 2026 Hitbee-dev

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If PulseBar saves you from one surprise rate limit, drop it a ⭐ — it helps others find it.