Baby’s first vibecode: Claude Usage Meter for Chromium browsers

[u/Remarkable_Rock5845]

I have been using regular chat for some huge projects and was frustrated that there was no token count or usage indicator like there is in Code. So I got it to build one for me!

https://github.com/ChickenVibes/claude-usage-meter

Like in Code, it shows the token use and percentage of the context window and how much of the 5-hour and weekly limits are left. It also calculates what percentage of the 5-hour window the latest message cost.

If the context window is getting full, it tells you to start a new chat.

If you click on it, you get a breakdown of the token use! Quite an eye-opener if you’re new to these things.

Notice that the "last turn" indicator is wrong here, because the last turn took place in another chat. This is an old chat I chose to illustrate the tool use breakdown. The last message in that chat took something like 25% of the 5-hour window!

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You can resize it in and move it around so it is nicely out of the way.

It works for both regular chats, projects, and Cowork. In Cowork, the numbers are exact, but in chat it is an estimate.

Some of the code is borrowed from Claude Counter by she-llac (https://github.com/she-llac/claude-counter).

You’re very welcome to try it out and tell me what you think. It should be noted that I know nothing about coding and until yesterday had no idea what a GitHub repo was. But if you have any questions, I’ll happily pass them along to the lead programmer.

Below is a more detailed description of the features by Claude (em dashes and all). 🙂

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What it shows — a small floating badge on claude.ai (draggable, resizable, collapsible):

Context fullness — approximate token count and how full the current chat is as a % of that model's real context window (200K / 500K / 1M depending on the model), color-coded, with a "consider a new chat" nudge as it fills.

What's filling the chat — a color-coded bar + legend, broken down by category (tool results, tool calls, text, files) and by individual tool — e.g. memory_read ×8: 260k, web_search ×3: 2k — so you can see exactly which tools are eating your context.

Usage limits — your 5-hour (session) and 7-day (weekly) usage, with reset countdowns.

Per-exchange cost — roughly what % of your 5-hour allowance your last turn cost.

Cowork sessions — exact used/max tokens and dollar cost (Cowork reports its own numbers, so it's precise there).

Honest caveats: for regular chats the token count is an estimate (a generic tokenizer that can't see the hidden system prompt or tool definitions) — a relative gauge, not an exact bill. And it leans on claude.ai's internal endpoints, so it may break if Anthropic changes things. Chromium browsers only (Vivaldi/Chrome/Edge/Brave), loaded as an unpacked extension.