Vector AI Pulse

Ambient budget pacing for metered, agentic AI coding tools (Claude Code and peers) — right in the status bar.

Privacy, first

• Zero network code. This extension imports no networking module of any kind. There is nothing to phone home with. This is enforced automatically, not just promised: npm run lint:privacy (scripts/check-no-network.mjs) scans the source and built output for any http/https/net/dns/tls/fetch usage and fails the build if found, and runs in CI on every push (.github/workflows/vector-ai-pulse-ci.yml).
• All data stays local, in a single human-readable JSON file at ~/.vector-ai-pulse/store.json. Open it, read it, delete it — it's yours.
• No accounts, no telemetry, no license checks for anything in this extension.

What it does (v1)

• Automatically tracks usage by reading each tool's own local session data — no manual entry needed:

  • Claude Code — ~/.claude/projects/**/*.jsonl
  • Cline — its VS Code extension's taskHistory.json
  • Codex CLI — $CODEX_HOME/sessions/**/rollout-*.jsonl

  Never your prompts or completions — token counts, model, timestamps, and cost only.

• Tracks your daily/monthly AI spend against a budget you set.

• Shows a glanceable status bar cue — green/amber/red pace state — so you know if you're on track without leaving the editor.

• Click the cue to open the Pulse panel, split into two tabs:

  • Live/Recent — open sessions (live and idle, each session's own accent color, project name + session ID + tool badge in the header), a per-model breakdown table when a session spans more than one model (current model pinned to the top, with in/out tokens, cache hit %, and cost per model, plus a total row), a rule-based recommendation, today's and this period's pace against budget, and today's activity grouped by project.
  • Past — a period toggle (week / last-N-days / all time) and metric toggle (cost / tokens / cache hit %) driving one trend chart and an expandable top-sessions list (multi-model sessions show a per-model cost-share pill on expand), plus all-time spend-by-model-over-time, by-tool, and by-model breakdowns.

• A native notification nudges you once a session goes quiet long enough to count as closed, only when there's something actionable to say (capped at 3/day).

• Manual entry for tools that don't expose per-token usage yet, plus CSV export for your own records.

Commands

• Vector AI Pulse: Open Pulse Panel
• Vector AI Pulse: Set Budget...
• Vector AI Pulse: Log Manual Entry...
• Vector AI Pulse: Export CSV...
• Vector AI Pulse: Reset All Data

Settings

• vector.aiPulse.cueStyle — standard (default), minimal, or off.
• vector.aiPulse.pricing — per-million-token USD overrides by model id, merged over built-in defaults.
• vector.aiPulse.trendDays — trend chart window in days (default 30, 7-180).
• vector.aiPulse.activeSessionWindowMinutes — how recent a session's last activity must be to show as "active" (default 10).
• vector.aiPulse.idleSessionWindowMinutes — how long past the active window a session still shows as "idle" (open but quiet) before it's treated as closed (default 60).