Your AI Fuel Gauge

You’re probably not running out of tokens. You’re running out of confidence.

If your plan is too small, no widget fixes that — upgrade first. But if you’re on a flat-rate subscription and still rationing prompts like a hiker rationing water on a trail that turned out to be two miles long, the problem isn’t supply. It’s visibility. You self-throttle because you can’t see the gauge, and you finish the day with budget to spare and nothing ambitious to show for it. That’s overhead, not output.

The fuel gauge

I built a status bar widget that shows two numbers side by side: how much of your token budget you’ve used versus how much time has elapsed in the window. Claude Max resets session limits every 5 hours and weekly limits every 7 days. The gauge shows where you stand in both.

The reading 23%|64% means: I’ve used 23% of my session tokens, but 64% of the 5-hour window has elapsed. Green — plenty of room. If the first number catches the second, the bar turns yellow, then red.

Most of the time it tells you what you needed to hear: you’re fine. Keep going. That’s what it mostly does for me — proves I have headroom, session after session, until the scarcity reflex loses its grip.

Reading the bar

The color is the ratio of usage to elapsed time:

A morning session might go like this: you start at 0%|0% green, burn through a big exploration task and hit 45%|20% red. You ease off for an hour, let time catch up, and by mid-session you’re at 52%|55% cyan. Without the gauge, you’d either hammer until the wall or start worrying after the first burst. With it, you just… adjust.

The code

Under the hood, it’s a pacing ratio. Given a usage percentage and an elapsed-time percentage, pick a color:

def pick_colors(used, elapsed):
    if elapsed < 1:
        return CYAN, YELLOW
    ratio = used / elapsed
    if ratio >= 1.5:   return RED, DIM
    elif ratio >= 1.0: return YELLOW, DIM
    elif ratio >= 0.7: return CYAN, YELLOW
    else:              return GREEN, YELLOW

Then build the bar — solid blocks for tokens used, shaded for time elapsed, empty for remaining:

bar = "".join(
    f"{uc}█" if i < used_w
    else f"{ec}▓" if i < el_w
    else f"{DIM}░"
    for i in range(BAR_WIDTH))
print(f"{bar} {used:.0f}%|{el:.0f}%")

This runs on ccstatusline as a custom command widget. The full script — including the elapsed-time calculation from your session reset timestamp — is in this gist. Drop it in ~/.config/ccstatusline/ and add a custom-command widget to your settings.json.

A caveat

This works for me because it mostly shows green. If your subscription doesn’t cover your usage and the gauge is perpetually yellow, it will make things worse. The gauge is a confidence builder, not a rationing system. Fix the plan first.

The other half of the dashboard

The 40% rule covers context quality — keeping your AI sharp by not filling the window. This post covers the psychological side — letting go of the scarcity reflex.

Same philosophy: make the invisible visible, then let your brain handle the rest. Green bar, green light. Focus on the code, not the meter.