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Features

An overview of everything Prism can do.

Smart Billing Detection

Prism automatically detects whether you are authenticated via an API key or a Max/Pro OAuth token and renders usage information accordingly.

API billing shows:

  • Session cost in dollars ($1.23)
  • Cache efficiency with the ⌁ symbol (⌁78%) — higher is better
  • Estimated burn rate per hour (~$4.50/h)

Max/Pro plans show:

  • Time remaining in the session limit with usage percentage (4h30m:78%)
  • Weekly limit with usage percentage (5d:40%)
  • Opus weekly limit when applicable

Color urgency applies to both modes:

Usage Color
Under 70% White
70–89% Yellow
90% and above Red

Context Window Visualization

The context section renders a visual progress bar using Unicode block characters, giving you an at-a-glance view of how much of the context window you have consumed.

  • Supports standard context windows and extended 1M-token context windows
  • Uses the same white / yellow / red urgency color system as usage

Git Integration

The git section surfaces the state of your repository without leaving Claude Code:

  • Branch name
  • Dirty status (*) when there are uncommitted changes
  • Untracked files indicator (+) when untracked files are present
  • Upstream tracking: commits behind (⇣n) and commits ahead (⇡n)

Worktree sessions are indicated with a ⎇ prefix in the directory section, making it easy to identify which worktree you are working in.

Plugin Ecosystem

Prism ships with 14 built-in native Go plugins covering common development workflows. Additional plugins can be added from the community or written yourself.

Plugin type Description
Built-in Compiled into Prism; zero external dependencies, maximum performance
Script plugins Shell scripts that print a single line of output
Binary plugins Compiled executables that follow the Prism plugin protocol

The plugin manager CLI makes it easy to manage third-party plugins:

prism plugin add <source>
prism plugin list
prism plugin update
prism plugin remove <name>

Plugins execute in parallel so a slow plugin does not block the rest of the status line from rendering.

Multi-line Layouts

Status information can be organized across multiple lines by using nested arrays in the sections config:

{
  "sections": [
    ["dir", "model", "context", "usage", "git"],
    ["spotify"]
  ]
}

This keeps the primary information on the first line and secondary or auxiliary plugins on subsequent lines.

Hook System

Prism registers handlers for all 11 Claude Code lifecycle events:

Hook Async Purpose
UserPromptSubmit No Mark status as busy
Stop Yes Mark status as idle
SessionStart Yes Initialize session state
SessionEnd Yes Flush session state
PreCompact No Pre-compact housekeeping
Setup No One-time setup on session init
PreToolUse No React before a tool runs
PostToolUse Yes Invalidate caches after tool use
PermissionRequest No Handle permission prompts
Notification Yes Process Claude notifications
SubagentStop Yes React when a subagent finishes

Hooks drive cache invalidation, state transitions, and any plugin behavior that needs to respond to Claude Code events.

Auto-Updates

Prism keeps itself up to date without requiring manual intervention:

  • Checks for new releases every 8 hours (configurable)
  • Downloads and installs updates in the background while Claude is idle
  • Does not interrupt active sessions

The update interval and auto-update behavior are configurable. See Configuration for details.

Caching

Prism uses an intelligent caching layer to avoid redundant work during rapid status line refreshes:

  • Each plugin has its own configurable TTL
  • Cache entries are invalidated by relevant hook events (for example, PostToolUse invalidates git state)
  • Cached results are served instantly, keeping the status line responsive even under heavy tool use