What is Claude Code's statusline?​

Claude Code's statusline feature allows you to create custom status displays that appear at the bottom of the Claude Code interface, similar to how terminal prompts work in shells. The statusline receives rich JSON data about your current AI session via stdin, including:

• Model information: Which Claude model you're using (Claude Sonnet, Claude Opus, etc.)
• Token usage: Input/output tokens, context window utilization, and usage percentages
• Cost tracking: Real-time cost calculations and session duration
• Workspace context: Current and project directories
• Session metadata: Unique session IDs and version information

The statusline updates automatically when conversation messages change (throttled to every 300ms max), and your command's stdout becomes the status display with full ANSI color support.

Setting Up the Integration​

Configuration is straightforward. Add this to your Claude Code settings:

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "oh-my-posh claude",
    "padding": 0
  }
}

That's it! Oh My Posh will automatically detect when Claude Code provides session data and display the relevant information in your prompt.

It's important to note that the claude CLI command operates differently from your regular prompt configuration. When used as a statusline command, Oh My Posh runs in a special mode that's completely separate from your standard terminal prompt. This means you'll likely want to create a dedicated, minimal configuration specifically for Claude Code that focuses on displaying AI session information rather than your usual prompt elements.

Custom configuration​

By default, the oh-my-posh claude command provides a built-in statusline that shows your current working directory, git context, active model name, and context window usage as a visual gauge. To customize this display, use the --config flag to specify your own theme configuration file that includes a custom claude segment tailored to your preferences.

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "oh-my-posh claude --config ~/.claude.omp.json",
    "padding": 0
  }
}

Just make sure the configuration also leverages the data available in the claude segment to visualize the stats you care about. As this isn't like a regular prompt integration, keep the statusline a single line and use left and right aligned prompt blocks to play with.

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/schema.json",
  "palette": {
    "black": "#262B44",
    "blue": "#4B95E9",
    "green": "#59C9A5",
    "orange": "#F07623",
    "red": "#D81E5B",
    "sapling": "#a6d189",
    "white": "#E0DEF4",
    "yellow": "#F3AE35"
  },
  "accent_color": "32",
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "prompt",
      "alignment": "left",
      "segments": [
        {
          "options": {
            "dir_length": 3,
            "folder_separator_icon": "\ue0bb",
            "style": "fish"
          },
          "template": "{{ if .Segments.Git.Dir }} \uf1d2 <i><b>{{ .Segments.Git.RepoName }}{{ if .Segments.Git.IsWorkTree }} \ue21c{{ end }}</b></i>{{ $rel :=  .Segments.Git.RelativeDir }}{{ if $rel }} \ueaf7 {{ .Format $rel }}{{ end }}{{ else }} \uea83 {{ path .Path .Location }}{{ end }} ",
          "foreground": "p:white",
          "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
          "background": "p:orange",
          "type": "path",
          "style": "diamond"
        },
        {
          "options": {
            "branch_icon": "\ue0a0",
            "fetch_status": true
          },
          "template": " {{ if .UpstreamURL }}{{ url .UpstreamIcon .UpstreamURL }} {{ end }}{{ .HEAD }}{{if .BranchStatus }} {{ .BranchStatus }}{{ end }}{{ if .Working.Changed }} \uf044 {{ nospace .Working.String }}{{ end }}{{ if .Staging.Changed }} \uf046 {{ .Staging.String }}{{ end }} ",
          "foreground": "p:black",
          "leading_diamond": "<parentBackground,background>\ue0b0</>",
          "trailing_diamond": "\ue0b4",
          "background": "p:green",
          "type": "git",
          "style": "diamond",
          "foreground_templates": [
            "{{ if or (.Working.Changed) (.Staging.Changed) }}p:black{{ end }}",
            "{{ if or (gt .Ahead 0) (gt .Behind 0) }}p:white{{ end }}"
          ],
          "background_templates": [
            "{{ if or (.Working.Changed) (.Staging.Changed) }}p:yellow{{ end }}",
            "{{ if and (gt .Ahead 0) (gt .Behind 0) }}p:red{{ end }}",
            "{{ if gt .Ahead 0 }}#49416D{{ end }}",
            "{{ if gt .Behind 0 }}#7A306C{{ end }}"
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "prompt",
      "alignment": "right",
      "segments": [
        {
          "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
          "template": " \udb82\udfc9 {{ .Model.DisplayName }} \uf2d0 {{ .TokenUsagePercent.GaugeUsed }} ",
          "foreground": "p:white",
          "background": "accent",
          "type": "claude",
          "style": "diamond"
        },
        {
          "options": {
            "charged_icon": "\ue22f ",
            "charging_icon": "\ue234 ",
            "discharging_icon": "\ue231 "
          },
          "cache": {
            "duration": "10m",
            "strategy": "session"
          },
          "leading_diamond": "<background,parentBackground>\ue0b2</>",
          "trailing_diamond": "\ue0b4",
          "template": "{{ if not .Error }} {{ .Icon }}{{ .Percentage }}%{{ end }}",
          "foreground": "#111111",
          "background": "accent",
          "type": "battery",
          "style": "diamond",
          "background_templates": [
            "{{if eq \"Discharging\" .State.String}}p:orange{{end}}",
            "{{if eq \"Full\" .State.String}}p:green{{end}}"
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "version": 4
}

The Claude Code segment​

Oh My Posh's new claude segment taps into this statusline data to bring AI session awareness directly into your terminal prompt. When you use the oh-my-posh claude command as your statusline command in Claude Code, you get access to a wealth of session information that can be displayed in your prompt without needing to know the technical details.

Example Configuration​

Here's a sample configuration that shows the model name and context usage:

{
  "type": "claude",
  "style": "diamond",
  "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
  "trailing_diamond": "\ue0b4",
  "foreground": "#FFFFFF",
  "background": "#FF6B35",
  "template": " \udb82\udfc9 {{ .Model.DisplayName }} \uf2d0 {{ .TokenUsagePercent.Gauge }} "
}

This displays something like: 🤖 Claude 4.5 Sonnet ▰▰▰▱▱

The gauge provides instant visual feedback on how much of your context window you've consumed, which is crucial for managing long coding sessions.

The Technical Details​

Under the hood, Oh My Posh reads the rich JSON session data that Claude Code provides via stdin when used as a statusline command. The segment only activates when Claude Code session data is available, so there's no performance impact when you're not using Claude Code.

Getting Started​

If you're already using Oh My Posh, adding Claude Code integration is as simple as:

1. Install Claude Code if you haven't already
2. Add the statusline configuration to your Claude Code settings
3. Optionally create your own configuration including the claude segment
4. Start a Claude Code session and watch your prompt come alive

For detailed configuration options and all available properties, check out the complete Claude segment documentation.

What's Next?​

This integration opens up exciting possibilities. Imagine prompts that:

• Change color based on token usage percentage
• Show different icons for different AI models
• Display cost warnings when sessions get expensive
• Integrate with any other segment to show additional development context

The foundation is there, and now it's up to the community to build amazing configurations that make AI-powered development even more seamless.

Context​

rprompt is a feature that allows you to display a prompt at the right side of the terminal, on the same line as your cursor. This feature is available natively on a lot of shells, but not on bash. To work around this limitation, Oh My Posh has a custom implementation we use for both bash and PowerShell.

History​

First implementation​

There were two evolutions of bash' custom rprompt in Oh My Posh. The first one printed the rprompt together with the primany prompt in the PS1 variable, so we only need one CLI call to visualize the prompt.

The challenge is that, as the rprompt is printed together with the primary prompt, we need to make sure bash' readline can interpret the prompt correctly. In bash, every character that isn't a printable character, like color codes, needs to be wrapped in \[ and \]. This is necessary to make sure bash can calculate the length of the prompt and ultimately position the cursor correctly.

It turned out that for rprompt, this needed to be done differently. The rprompt is printed after what bash interprets as the end of the prompt. We found out that we need to wrap the entire rprompt in \[ and \], and not escape individual non-printable characters.

We did that for a while, but apparently this approach was not very robust. It was easy to break readline's cursor position calculation, and it was hard to debug. The behaviour of this was also different cross platform, so we had to go back to the drawing board.

Second implementation​

The second implementation of the rprompt was a lot more robust. We decided to print the rprompt in a separate CLI call, so we could control the output more easily. It leveraged the use of the PROMPT_COMMAND variable in bash, which is a hook that is executed before the prompt is printed. We would first print the rprompt in the PROMPT_COMMAND, and then set the primary prompt in the PS1 variable so bash would not bother about the rprompt being there.

This approach was a lot cleaner from an achitectural point of view, but it came with its own challenges. The most obvious one is needing two CLI calls to print the prompt, which made rendering a bit slower than the first implementation.

Additionally, as we print before PS1 is evaluated, we noticed the following issues along the way:

1. when the output of the previous command didn't end with a newline, the rprompt would be printed on the same line as the output of the previous command
2. when the prompt was at the bottom of the terminal buffer, the rprompt would be printed on the same line as the prompt, which would break the prompt
3. depending on the platform, it would still break command history navigation
4. it required different logic for multiline prompts as we print before PS1 and need to reposition the cursor correctly

Of these issues, only bullet 4 could be fixed. Everything else was outside of our control.

Conclusion​

Oh My Posh is a tool that needs to be easy to use, maintain and be 100% reliable. One of the core principles of Oh My Posh is that it should never break the shell. The rprompt feature in bash has never been reliable enough, and it was hard to debug when it broke. I spent countless hours debugging issues with the rprompt in bash, but it's time to move on. If you want to use the rprompt feature, I would recommend using a shell that supports it natively, like nushell, zsh or fish.

What about Powershell?​

The rprompt feature in PowerShell is 100% reliable, even if it's not natively supported. PowerShell doesn't have the same challenges calculating the actual prompt width like bash, there's no need to escape anything. We can use the first implementation mentioned above, and it works like a charm.

PowerShell module​

In the beginning, all we had was the PowerShell Module. It's the origin of Oh My Posh and has remained available ever since, even with the move to Go. With that evolution however, its advantages have been greatly reduced. In fact, it even introduced additional hurdles along the way.

As of March, the module no longer offers new functionality and displays a warning message. Have a look at the migration page for a guide on how to migrate from the module to other means of installation. It only takes a minute.

Giveaway​

A fews weeks ago I started a giveaway to celebrate the 6 year anniversary of Oh My Posh. But then I went on holiday, and didn't follow up to announce the winner. So without further ado, congratulations to @samerde for getting picked by a random online random picker and winning the giveaway!

Features​

It's been a while, so you might want to hang tight 😅

PowerShell UTF-8​

In the early days, Oh My Posh was forcibly setting PowerShell to UTF-8 due to issues with fonts and paths. However, it turned out that wasn't really necessary. A new way of invocation was introduced, which removes the need to set this shell wide and avoids unwanted side effects. This can however still break path when for example your --config path contains a non-ascii character. Can't win them all I guess. In that case, set the shell to UTF-8 in the scope of initializing Oh My Posh.

$previousOutputEncoding = [Console]::OutputEncoding
[Console]::OutputEncoding = [Text.Encoding]::UTF8
try {
    oh-my-posh init pwsh --config ~/custom.omp.json | Invoke-Expression
} finally {
    [Console]::OutputEncoding = $previousOutputEncoding
}

Nu shell​

If you haven't seen Nu shell yet, it's a new kid on the block. Oh My Posh now supports it just like we support any other popular shell (bash, zsh, fish, etc). This means we can keep adding functionality without the need for user interaction apart from updating Oh My Posh.

Accordion​

Ever wanted to have a powerline segment to display collapsed when disabled? Now you can! Use the accordion style to display a segment in a collapsible state.

Project​

Things just keep growing. The project segment now supports the following project definitions:

• cargo
• poetry
• php
• nuspec

Shell​

If you work with multiple shell versions, this one's for you. You can now use the .Version property in the shell segment to distinct between versions:

"template": " in {{ .Name }} {{ .Version }} "

Git​

The git segment learned a new trick to make your life easier (or faster). Before we hardcoded the untracked files mode to normal. However, on larger repo's this can get rather cumbersome, so we now allow you to override this per repo.

"untracked_modes": {
  "/Users/user/Projects/oh-my-posh/": "no"
}

The available options are listed in the git documentation, use them as you see fit!

Cross segment template properties​

Wait, what? Yes, you read that right. Oh My Posh now supports cross segment template properties. This means you can use one segment's properties in another segment's template. How? Oh My Posh exposes the .Segments property which contains all segment's properties in a map. To make use of another segment's data, use {{ .Segments.Segment }} in your template where .Segment is the name of the segment you want to use with the first letter uppercased.

If you want to for example use the git segment's .UpstreamGone property in the exit segment, you can do so like this:

"template": " {{ if .Segments.Git.UpstreamGone }}\uf7d3{{ else if gt .Code 0 }}\uf00d{{ else }}\uf00c{{ end }} "

Other​

• oh-my-posh debug now measures the run time correctly and can log startup logic
• The language segments can now distinct between files and folders
• The python segment now supports pyenv .python-version files
• The init command has a new switch called --strict which no longer resolves the executable
• The battery segment can now display all relevant states on macOS
• The dotnet segment now supports .slnf files
• A new segment to display iTerm shell integration prompt marks
• The memory segment can now display available memory
• The path segment now has a .Writable property, indicating if the current user can write to the current folder

Fixes​

• The git segment can now handle repo's with --separate-git-dir
• Hyperlinks are correctly measured (which should display the right aligned prompt correctly)
• Prompt escape sequences are correctly escaped, this avoids unwanted visual side effects
• Spotify now works correctly on Windows for non-English systems
• Parallel logic to make things fast no longer randomly crashes on Windows
• Upstream gone logic for git was broken, and has been fixed
• PSReadLine in PowerShell now receives the correct amount of prompt lines (Set-PSReadlineOption -ExtraPromptLineCount), this fixes weird behaviour when using a transient prompt when your config results in a multiline prompt
• The winget installer now adds PATH entries correctly, regardless of the installation mode

That's it for this time, see you for the next one 🤞🏻

Keep that prompt posh everyone!

What happened?​

In the beginning of the year, after what has been quite the struggle, I was finally able to deliver the most important architectural update since the introduction of the rewrite in Go. Because of this, a migration of old configs was needed so that no end user would have to go through the ordeal of figuring out what to map where, it's a very logical process and obviously computers are better at that.

To facilitate this, I added a config property called version which can be incremented when the configuration evolves and triggers an automatic migration when necessary. The logic to identify the need for migration is as follows:

if !env.Flags().Migrate && cfg.Version != configVersion {
    cfg.BackupAndMigrate(env)
}

If you're observant, you might already spot the issue now that you know the use-case. For those of us who like to read and not think, the result is rather straightforward as it will always run the migration, either when forced (because you can use oh-my-posh config migrate manually), or when the current config version doesn't match the required config version. Simple, right? And this works according to expectations when updating Oh My Posh. The problem starts when you have a shared config, and use multiple versions of Oh My Posh on the same machine.

Imagine working using multiple shells, one is WSL Ubuntu with a version of Oh My Posh that's still on version 1 (S1). One day, you update PowerShell in Windows to use the latest greatest, using version 2 (S2). Starting S2, it automatically migrates the config to version 2, moving the template property to the segment's model.

In practice, the following version 1 config:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/schema.json",
  "version": 1,
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "prompt",
      "alignment": "left",
      "segments": [
        {
          "background": "#9A348E",
          "foreground": "#ffffff",
          "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
          "properties": {
            "template": "{{ .UserName }} "
          },
          "style": "diamond",
          "type": "session"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Is migrated to:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/schema.json",
  "version": 2,
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "prompt",
      "alignment": "left",
      "segments": [
        {
          "background": "#9A348E",
          "foreground": "#ffffff",
          "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
          "template": "{{ .UserName }} ",
          "style": "diamond",
          "type": "session"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Awesome, no user interaction at all and everything works as designed. However, you now want to do something using S1, and due to the logic, Oh My Posh sees that 2 != 1 and the migration is triggered for version 1. The migration as such is non-breaking, but Oh My Posh doesn't know the template property on segment in this case. The end result of our config above is rather annoying as we're now left with this:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/JanDeDobbeleer/oh-my-posh/main/themes/schema.json",
  "version": 1,
  "blocks": [
    {
      "type": "prompt",
      "alignment": "left",
      "segments": [
        {
          "background": "#9A348E",
          "foreground": "#ffffff",
          "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
          "style": "diamond",
          "type": "session"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

😱 the template is gone! Nothing to worry about just yet, Oh My Posh will use the default template so you will still see a prompt, and the migration also creates a backup of your previously correct version 2 config. Up to this point you can still revert, it's unfortunate, but your local tweaks are still available. If you happen to continue working in S2 at this point however, it will once again trigger the migration to version 2 and overwrite your backup with the faulty version 1 config.

While the fix for this issue in code is trivial, it's impossible to push that to older versions. People will upgrade to the most recent version, and in this specific setup, this is potentially breaking. The advice is to upgrade all versions at once, so you only migrate once and there's no "old" version of Oh My Posh left to trigger this unwanted side-effect.

The actual fix for the issue can be found in 7.52.1, but due to obvious reasons, it will only work going from version 2 to any new config version in the future.

if !env.Flags().Migrate && cfg.Version < configVersion {
    cfg.BackupAndMigrate(env)
}

While I try hard to come up with every possible edge case when validating this logic, sometimes things slip through. Even when looking at this one I find it challenging not having considered that case, but it still happened. The good news? It won't happen again 😅

Features​

CLI interface (also #2)​

In the previous post I highlighted some changes in the CLI interface. Turns out I could make it even more straightforward. As Oh My Posh is a prompt generating utility, the prompt command doesn't make sense as that's implied. It has been removed, although it will keep working to not break existing functionality on upgrade.

Init​

The following initialization:

oh-my-posh prompt init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

now becomes:

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

Debug​

To debug Oh My Posh, you can simply use the debug command. It's smart enough to know your config so you don't have to specify the --config option.

oh-my-posh debug

Fish shell​

We already supported fish shell for a while, but we stepped up the game. I started using fish as my primary shell, so obviously it couldn't stay behind. I suggest you also have a go at it, it's a very enjoyable experience.

But OK, what changed? We now support the following out-of-the-box:

• right prompt
• transient prompt
• tooltips

It seems there's no support (yet) for a secondary prompt in fish, once that's available we can easily add that too. To enjoy all of this, upgrade to the latest and initialize fish by adding the following line to ~/.config/fish/config.fish:

oh-my-posh init fish | source

Transient prompt​

Speaking of transient, it learned some new tricks. First, you can now use the .Code property to work with the last command's error code (if any) in the template. This can for example be used to color the transient prompt differently when the last command failed. That did imply we also needed support for color templates, as that wasn't possible just yet. Say no more, we now have a transient prompt that supports color templates.

"transient_prompt": {
    "background": "p:yellow",
    "background_templates": [
      "{{ if gt .Code 0 }}p:red{{ end }}"
    ],
    "foreground": "p:black",
    "foreground_templates": [
      "{{ if gt .Code 0 }}p:white{{ end }}"
    ],
    "template": "<background,transparent>\ue0b6</> {{ .Folder }} <background,transparent>\ue0b0</><,transparent> </>"
}

Which produces the following result:

Config version 2​

Remember we did a migration to config version 1 in the beginning of the year? Well, we did a migration to version 2. Looking at Oh My Posh's architecture, the different prompts (transient, secondary, ...) were moving closer to the model used by segments. The only difference was that template wasn't a property, but a field of those prompts. As all segments now have template support, it was a no-brainer to align both models and do a migration to config version 2 so nobody would have any manual work in the process.

The following segment definition:

{
  "background": "#9A348E",
  "foreground": "#ffffff",
  "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
  "properties": {
    "template": "{{ .UserName }} "
  },
  "style": "diamond",
  "type": "session"
}

Will now be migrated to this for version 2:

{
  "background": "#9A348E",
  "foreground": "#ffffff",
  "leading_diamond": "\ue0b6",
  "style": "diamond",
  "template": "{{ .UserName }} ",
  "type": "session"
}

Go 1.18​

Not something that impacts the end user directly, but maybe interesting to know is that Oh My Posh is now using go 1.18 by default. This brings obvious language improvements and a few new features we can play with. The most notable is generics, but it doesn't seem like we can benefit just yet as it's not yet supported for methods, and that's the main use-case for us.

Nonetheless, it's good to stay up-to-date, if you notice any quirks though, be sure to let us know!

That's it for this week, see you for the next one 🤞🏻

Keep that prompt posh everyone!

Swag​

After seeing Scott Hanselman wear his oh my zsh shirt while we got to talk about Oh My Posh on Windows Wednesdays, I got the sudden urge to expand his wardrobe.

And so, we did. Got in touch with Marc Duiker and we got to work. The result? A ton of new goodies. Consider this to be the first artist series for Oh My Posh, a way to also highlight some talented people in the community. All profits go to the development of the project and artists also get a 20% royalty per item sold. If you know any interesting artists to work with for the next batch, be sure to let me know!

So, what are you waiting for? Get some!

• Shirts
• Stickers

Features​

CLI interface​

Something I've been sleeping on for a long time, Oh My Posh finally has a new CLI interface. Starting out I had no experience in Go, nor any idea on how to create a proper CLI interface. Over the years the interface grew, but not in a very sustainable way, it was a chain of if statements which was a bit of a pain to support.

You can now interact with Oh My Posh via an interface powered by Cobra. Not only does this bring maintainability and extensibility, it at once introduces a few added features.

Init​

If you paid attention to the evolution of the init functionality which automatically supercharges your prompt, you might have noticed I was always trying to make it easier for anyone to get started. When working on the shirts with Marc, it hit me we didn't really have an identifiable prompt as a first time experience. So, as of 7.42.0 Oh My Posh can initialize your prompt without specifying the --config flag. Because we have no way to know how you installed Oh My Posh, and if you have themes installed locally, we download the default theme, cache and use it to get you up and running right there.

When using PowerShell for example, this is all it takes from now on:

oh-my-posh init pwsh | Invoke-Expression

Export config​

While this functionality was already present, you can now also save the current config to a new file in the format of your choice. Combining that with the new initialization above, new users can right away save the default config elsewhere and tweak it to make it their own.

oh-my-posh config export --output=~/.mytheme.omp.json

Edit​

Putting things together, all we needed additionally was a way to edit the config.

oh-my-posh config edit

Almost feels natural right?

RRRRRRR Matey!​

Thanks to Jed Willick, who's already been on a roll for a while adding segments to Oh My Posh, we now have a segment for R 🏴‍☠️. Read all about it here.

Bug fixes​

Obviously, nothing is perfect. But we aim to be! The following issues have been found and fixed:

• We now display the right distro name in WSL
• The poshgit prompt is now disabled when using Oh My Posh
• Terminal titles are stripped from ANSI escape sequences, otherwise they are not displayed correctly
• The config file now also works with the .yml extension and not only .yaml

That's it for this week, I'll try to keep this up 🤞🏻.

Keep that prompt posh everyone!