I made my first public Claude Code mod

I have my first live repo. It is super simple. I still wanted to note it down.

It's a mod for Claude Code called context-meter.

Why I made it

I kept opening the context popover to check my usage. How full is the context? How much of the week have I used? Click, look, close. Many times a day.

Mods came out on 1 October. A mod can draw a row above the prompt box. So on 4 October I asked Claude to build one.

Now there's one row: Context, my five-hour limit, my seven-day limit, and what the session has cost. Context and the seven-day number are the two I look at most. A number turns amber at 60 percent and red at 85.

There's also a Recap button. Press it and it tells me three things: where the work is now, what is waiting on me, and what comes next. I chose a button over having it run by itself. Each press is one more call to the model, and I don't need it every turn.

What I took out

Frankly, most of the work was taking things out.

I tried a pill for the cache. I tried showing the day's total cost on the row. I tried a second row for work I hadn't logged. All dropped, on the same day.

The cost per day is still recorded, quietly. I just don't need to see it every day. When I want it, I type `/spend`.

Putting it out

As part of my exploration, I wanted to try and put myself out there consistently. So I felt like I should start small.

I have created a lot of my own applications and tools in private. So this is a small step for me. Telling myself that you can just do things. No one but yourself is stopping you.

It took two more days to go from "works on my machine" to public. A README. A licence. A short demo video, which is a drawn mock and not a screen recording. A line saying it is not affiliated with Anthropic.

The overthinking

As someone who overthinks, I start to think of all the angles where it can go wrong. What if I copied someone? What if I got something wrong?

Those are answers I will not be able to get without taking this step outside my comfort zone.

So I took it.

The repo is here if you want the same row above your prompt.