crab-cam

A Claude Code mod: a small crab above the prompt acts out what Claude is doing, in the terminal and in the desktop app. Beside it, a shell shows how full the context window is and how much of your rate limits is used.

Optimised for the Claude Code desktop app.

Install

claude plugin marketplace add sTomerG/agent-kit
claude plugin install crab-cam@agent-kit

Requires Claude Code v2.1.287 or later; tested with v2.1.288.

To get new versions, run claude plugin update crab-cam@agent-kit, or enable auto-update for the marketplace under /plugin → Marketplaces.

Commands

| Command | What it does | | :- | :- | | /crab-cam | Hide or show the crab | | /crab-cam demo | Play every scene, three seconds each | | /crab-cam meter | Hide or show the shell meter | | /crab-cam details | Show or hide the meter's readings in figures beside the shell | | /crab-cam commands | Show commands as typed, or go back to the description of what they do |

Scenes

The scene follows the tool Claude calls. A shell command is read for what it does, so cat shows reading and cd repo && git status shows git.

| Scene | Shown when | | :- | :- | | thinking, writing a reply | Claude reasons or writes text | | reading | Read, or cat, head, tail, sed -n, jq in a shell | | writing code | Edit, Write, or sed -i, cat > file in a shell | | searching | Grep, Glob, or grep, rg, find, ls in a shell | | browsing the web | WebFetch, WebSearch, browser tools, curl, wget | | running a command | any other shell command | | running tests | pytest, vitest, jest, npm test, cargo test and the like | | working with git | git and gh, also further on in a chain such as make build && git status | | installing packages | npm install, pip install, uv add, brew install and the like | | putting helpers to work | subagents and workflows, during the turn and while they run on after it; the line under it says how many are at work and what they are doing, such as 3 helpers: 2 reading, 1 running tests | | making a plan | plan mode and task lists | | loading a skill | Skill | | writing text | an edit to a text file: .md, .txt, .rst, README, CHANGELOG and the like | | designing | an edit to a stylesheet or an .svg, a design or Figma tool, a design or diagramming skill, the start of an artifact, and an edit to an .html page later in that same turn | | remembering something | an edit to CLAUDE.md, MEMORY.md or a memory file | | sharing something | artifacts and files sent to you | | a question for you, waiting for permission | Claude asks, or a permission dialog is open | | waiting on a background task | Claude polls a background command or timer, or the turn ended with a command still running | | using a tool | any other tool | | tidying up its memory | the conversation is compacted | | oops | a tool call failed, or an API error or refusal ended the turn | | done, resting | the turn ended |

Work inside a subagent is not shown; the crab stays on "putting helpers to work" until the helper returns.

Meter

The shell fills as things are used:

• Ribs: the context window.
• Five pearls: the 5-hour rate limit.
• Seven smaller pearls: the weekly rate limit.

The last two units of a gauge turn red above 85%. The pearls are left out on accounts without rate-limit windows.

The meter comes in two forms, and /crab-cam meter hides it altogether:

| Default | With details (/crab-cam details) | | :- | :- | | | |

Development

claude --plugin-dir ./plugins/crab-cam   # load from disk, reload on save
claude plugin test plugins/crab-cam      # run the tests
claude plugin validate plugins/crab-cam  # check the manifest and hooks
npx tsx plugins/crab-cam/scripts/make-demo.mts  # redraw the animations in assets/

The editor types under .claude-plugin/types/ are generated and not committed. Claude Code writes them for your version when it loads the mod with --plugin-dir.

An unofficial community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.