Observability in the Terminal: Meet Claude HUD
AI terminal assistants like Anthropic's Claude Code have taken developer workflows by storm. They write code, execute tests, and modify files directly from your CLI. However, working with a terminal agent can often feel like a black box. Unless the model prints a long block of logs, you don't know what files it is reading, how many tokens are left in its context window, or what background subagents it has spawned.
Claude HUD is an open-source status line plugin developed by Jarrod Watts to solve this visibility problem. It adds a persistent, real-time Heads-Up Display (HUD) at the bottom of your Claude Code terminal screen.
What is Claude HUD?
Claude HUD functions as a status bar that resides directly below your terminal input line. By listening to the agent's internal states, it aggregates crucial metrics and displays them in a compact, readable layout. This ensures you always know what the agent is doing without cluttering your command history.
