Tips & best practices

Theme recipes

Copy any of these into ~/.config/claude-epic-status-line/config.sh.

Monochrome minimal — no hues, just states

Model families stop competing for attention; only the escalation colours remain meaningful.

CESL_COLOR_DIR='150;150;150'
CESL_COLOR_OPUS='200;200;200'
CESL_COLOR_SONNET='200;200;200'
CESL_COLOR_HAIKU='200;200;200'
CESL_COLOR_FABLE='200;200;200'
CESL_COLOR_MODEL='200;200;200'

Wide dashboard — chunkier bars, ASCII-safe

CESL_BAR_WIDTH=20
CESL_GLYPHS=ascii

Quiet mode — just model, context and rate limits

CESL_SHOW_DIR=0
CESL_SHOW_COST=0
CESL_SHOW_DURATION=0
CESL_SHOW_LINES=0
CESL_SHOW_EFFORT=0
CESL_SHOW_BADGES=0
CESL_SHOW_GIT=0

Costs in euros

CESL_CURRENCY_SYMBOL='€'
CESL_CURRENCY_RATE=0.92

Tune the thresholds to how you actually work

The defaults (70 / 80 / 90) suit long sessions where auto-compact is an annoyance rather than a disaster. If you routinely paste large files, move the warning earlier so you have time to react:

CESL_WARN=55
CESL_HIGH=70
CESL_CRIT=85

The cost thresholds work the same way, and they are the ones worth personalising most: CESL_COST_WARN should sit at the number that makes you glance at the clock, and CESL_COST_CRIT at the number that makes you stop.

Use the orange ⚠ as a workflow signal

The bold ⚠ at CESL_HIGH exists so you can /compact on your own terms — at a natural break, with a summary you control — rather than having auto-compact fire mid-task. Treat it as “finish the current thought, then compact”.

Watch the per-model row before starting big work

The per-model weekly bar is the one that ruins weeks. Glance at it before kicking off a long Opus session on a Monday: if it is already orange, either switch families or plan the work around the reset time shown at the end of the row.

Running several sessions in parallel

The git segment earns its place here. The ⎇wt marker and the branch name make it obvious which worktree a terminal belongs to, and the staged/unstaged/untracked counts tell you at a glance which session has uncommitted work waiting.

All sessions share one usage-API cache and a single-flight lock, so running five of them does not mean five times the API calls.

Keep the line short on narrow terminals

Claude Code does not wrap the status line — a long line is simply cut off. On a narrow terminal, turn off what you can reconstruct from elsewhere:

CESL_SHOW_LINES=0
CESL_SHOW_DIR=0
CESL_BAR_WIDTH=6

Reach for explain before editing config

explain prints the effective configuration after all three layers have merged, which usually turns “why is this not applying?” into a one-look answer. See Usage.