A Visual Studio Code extension that gives you live token-usage insight, budgets, and safety prompts while you work with Claude Code.

Features

Live context-window gauge in the status bar — how full the current session's context is right now (last turn's input + cache), scoped to the workspace you're in.
Live token meter — reads your local session transcripts under ~/.claude/projects/ and shows usage at a glance.
Per-session token budget — set a token target for a session; once it's crossed, Warden pauses Claude and asks you whether to continue or stop (Claude never presses on past the target on its own). Choosing Continue extends the target by one budget increment, so you get another checkpoint further along instead of a prompt on every tool call.
Pause / Resume — hold or release tool calls in a heavy session with one command.
Decision prompts — sensitive tools or shell-command patterns (destructive file deletions, force pushes, schema migrations) show an Allow/Deny prompt so nothing risky runs unattended.
Live activity feed — every event and decision streams to a Claude Warden Output channel, the status bar pulses on each decision, and the dashboard shows a rolling Recent activity table.
Config generator — sets up the integration in <workspace>/.claude/settings.json for you.

Two ways to measure usage

The status bar shows both, because they answer different questions:

Context window % (primary) — the last turn's input + cache-read + cache-creation, i.e. how close the session is to overflowing its context. Set claudeWarden.contextWindowTokens to 1000000 for 1M-context models.
Budget (x / y) — cumulative input + output across the whole session, gated by claudeWarden.tokenBudget. This is what triggers the continue-or-stop checkpoint.

Getting started

Install the extension and open your project folder.
Run Claude Warden: Generate Hooks Config from the Command Palette — it sets up the integration in .claude/settings.json for you.
Start a Claude Code session in that project. The status-bar meter comes alive, and gated tools show an Allow/Deny prompt.

Settings

Setting	Default	Purpose
`claudeWarden.tokenBudget`	`500000`	Token target per session; crossing it pauses Claude and asks you to continue or stop. `0` = no limit.
`claudeWarden.contextWindowTokens`	`200000`	Context-window size for the live gauge (use `1000000` for 1M models).
`claudeWarden.warnAtPercent`	`80`	Warn once when a session crosses this percent of the budget.
`claudeWarden.askForTools`	`["Bash"]`	Tool names (regex allowed) that require an Allow/Deny prompt.
`claudeWarden.askForBashPatterns`	`rm\s+-rf`, `git\s+push`, `drop\s+table`, `migrate`	Case-insensitive regexes; a matching command asks first.
`claudeWarden.port`	`43917`	Local port for the integration.
`claudeWarden.claudeProjectsDir`	`""`	Override for the Claude Code projects directory.

Commands

Claude Warden: Show Dashboard
Claude Warden: Show Activity Log
Claude Warden: Generate Hooks Config
Claude Warden: Reset Session Token Budget
Claude Warden: Pause Claude Code
Claude Warden: Resume Claude Code

Privacy

Everything runs on your machine. The extension reads your local Claude Code session transcripts to compute usage and communicates only over the local loopback interface — no data leaves your computer. Review .claude/settings.json before committing it to source control.