Headroom

Your coding agents check their Claude and Codex limits before they start a job.

headroomd reads the 5-hour and weekly limits your subscriptions report and answers go, wait or reroute, over the CLI or MCP.

npm install -g headroomd   # or: brew install apertur3/tap/headroom

headroom setup headroom can claude-fable --owner me && echo go

Then install the Claude Code plugin (requires headroomd above):

claude plugin marketplace add Apertur3/headroom

claude plugin install headroom@headroom

macOS, Linux, Windows (experimental). No telemetry. Zero runtime dependencies.

Not related to headroomlabs-ai/headroom, the context-compression project.

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Install

Node 22.13 or newer. The npm package is headroomd; the Homebrew formula is apertur3/tap/headroom. Both install the headroom command.

npm install -g headroomd

or, on macOS and Linux: brew install apertur3/tap/headroom

finds your logins, runs the doctor, asks before each change

headroom setup

one block per account: percent used, reset time and pace state per window

headroom

Claude usage comes from Claude Code's statusline. Add this to ~/.claude/settings.json (or the settings.json of each other profile), or chain an existing statusline with headroom statusline --chain ' ':

{ "statusLine": { "type": "command", "command": "headroom statusline" } }

Alongside it, Headroom runs Claude Code's own /usage at most every 10 minutes (it adds the scoped meters the statusline does not carry; the statusline never runs under claude -p, so it can go stale between runs). headroom doctor and headroom status say which is in use. Headroom never edits your Claude settings files.

For Claude Code, install the plugin after installing headroomd with npm or Homebrew:

claude plugin marketplace add Apertur3/headroom

claude plugin install headroom@headroom

It bundles the Headroom skill, the MCP server registration and a quota line on every prompt. Using it alongside headroom hook install does not print the quota line twice. See Claude Code plugin for requirements and uninstall commands.

Already running Claude Code or another agent? Copy skills/headroom/SKILL.md into its skills directory and say "set up headroom".

Without the plugin, headroom setup offers to register the MCP server for your default Claude Code profile. To register it by hand, or in another profile:

claude mcp add --scope user headroom -- headroom mcp

CLAUDE_CONFIG_DIR=~/.claude-work claude mcp add --scope user headroom -- headroom mcp

Agents without MCP, Codex for example, call the CLI. Then give your agents the instructions in For agents. The MCP tools and example calls are in docs/mcp-and-agents.md.

Manual setup and optional configuration

The three commands above are the short path. Discovery on its own:

headroom accounts discover   # finds Claude, Codex, Antigravity, Grok and Kimi logins

On macOS and Linux, brew install apertur3/tap/headroom installs the same package and adds a brew services start headroom service.

By hand, the same steps are one command:

headroom setup                # discovery, doctor, service, MCP registration -- asks before each change

Run headroom notify configure to choose notification channels, a preset and overrides. Run headroom update only when you choose to install a newer package; headroom uninstall reverses setup, and headroom completion prints a shell completion script.

accounts discover prints what it wrote (Wrote ~/.headroom/accounts.toml (4 accounts). Next: headroom doctor) and, the first time, seeds ~/.headroom/policy.toml and routing.toml from examples/ so headroom can --owner works immediately with the example action classes (claude-fable, codex-build, gemini-bulk) -- edit routing.toml to match your accounts.

Keep an optional second profile that is deliberately logged out without polling it: add enabled = false to its [[accounts]] block, or run headroom accounts disable . It remains configured and can be restored with headroom accounts enable .

Full walkthrough, including what each step grants and why: docs/quickstart.md.

status/doctor check the npm registry at most once a day (a plain GET of the headroomd version, no account data) and print a one-line notice when a newer headroomd is out; run headroom update (never automatic) to install it. Set update_check = false in ~/.headroom/policy.toml to turn the check off -- see Staying up to date.

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For agents

Paste this into the CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md your agents read, and replace the placeholders with your own action classes, meters and agent name. The agent then checks Headroom before it dispatches work, instead of asking you.

## Usage limits (Headroom)

Check Headroom before you start work on a subscription. Do not ask me about usage or reset times.

• headroom can --owner : exit 0 means go, exit 2 means no. Any other exit is an error: treat it as no. Classes are the [consumes] entries in ~/.headroom/routing.toml.
• On no, try the next class in your fallback list. If none has room, run headroom wait --meter --until-reset --max 6h (exit 3 means it timed out), then run headroom can again before you start anything.
• Start a job with headroom run --meter --need : --owner -- , for example --need 5h:10 for 10 percent of the 5-hour window. It reserves the points, runs the command and releases them when it exits. Exit 2 means refused; otherwise it returns the command's own exit code.
• UNKNOWN means there is no trustworthy reading. Treat it as no. Never pass --allow-unknown unless I ask for it.
• For the full picture, read headroom --json, not the human view.
• In Claude Code with the Headroom MCP server, quota_can answers the same question as headroom can.

To put live quota in front of the agent on every turn, run headroom hook install --agent claude (or answer yes in headroom setup). Each Claude Code prompt then carries one line the daemon wrote at its last poll, with its age, for about 60 tokens per turn; headroom line prints the same line for any agent. Claude Code on macOS and Linux only for now; Windows, Codex and Gemini hooks are not supported yet.

A plain can is advisory. A reservation tells other agents that use Headroom the points are taken; it does not limit what the job itself spends, and it cannot stop tools that do not use Headroom. The longer version, with pace states, leases and reserves, is skills/headroom/SKILL.md.

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Platform support and known limitations

7 sources read 3 OSes tested in CI 1 local daemon, one call per decision 0 telemetry (one opt-out update check)

Sources: five subscription services (Claude, Codex, Kimi, and the experimental Antigravity and Grok) and two local server types (vLLM and llama.cpp). A stale or failed reading prints UNKNOWN , never a number. Full writeup · Reproduce it

The full table: tests, CI, install checks, Windows, vendor endpoints

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