Status Line in Claude Code: What Every Indicator Means
The Status Line Layout
The status line appears at the bottom of your terminal during active Claude Code sessions. It updates in real-time as tokens are consumed and tools run. Reading it correctly lets you catch context saturation and tool failures before they become problems.
Context Indicators
The percentage shown is tokens used divided by the context window limit. When it passes 80%, you should expect degraded performance on very long tasks. When it passes 95%, the model starts dropping earlier conversation content. Use /clear to reset context without ending the session when you are running low.
Model Indicator
The left side shows the active model: opus:4.7, sonnet:4-6, or haiku. If you did not specify a model and this is not what you expected, check your claude_settings.json default.
Tool Status
Tool invocations show as inline indicators:
[TOOL: read]— reading files[TOOL: write]— writing files[TOOL: bash]— running shell commands[MCP: github]— calling an MCP server
If you see repeated tool calls without progress, Claude Code may be stuck in a loop — Ctrl+C to interrupt.
Error Indicators
Errors appear in red in the status line. Common ones:
[ERR: auth]— API key issue, re-authenticate[ERR: rate]— rate limit hit, wait or use a different model[ERR: timeout]— network issue, retry
Session State
Active session state is shown: [session: abc123] with a session ID. This is useful when resuming — you reference the ID to pick up a specific session.
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