Quick Start¶

Your First Status Line¶

After installation, start a new Claude Code session. Prism renders a status line at the bottom of the terminal that updates as you work. With the default configuration you will see something like:

myproject  Opus 4.6  ████░░░░▒▒ 56%  $1.23 ⌁78% ~$4.50/h  main*+ ⇣3 ⇡1

Each section is described below.

Section	Example	Description
Directory	`myproject`	Name of the current project directory
Model	`Opus 4.6`	Active Claude model
Context	`████░░░░▒▒ 56%`	Context window usage, visualized as a progress bar. Color shifts from white to yellow to red as usage rises.
Usage (API)	`$1.23 ⌁78% ~$4.50/h`	Session cost, cache efficiency, and estimated burn rate per hour
Usage (Max/Pro)	`4h30m:78% 5d:40% 4d:25%`	Time remaining in session limit, weekly limit, and Opus weekly limit
Git	`main*+ ⇣3 ⇡1`	Branch name, dirty flag (*), untracked files (+), commits behind (⇣n) and ahead (⇡n)

Prism automatically detects whether you are on an API billing plan or a Max/Pro subscription and displays the appropriate usage format.

Customizing Your Layout¶

Project Config¶

To customize the sections shown in a specific project, run:

prism init

This creates .claude/prism.json in your current directory. Open it and edit the sections array to control which sections appear and in what order:

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

Available section names correspond to the built-in plugins. See Built-in Plugins for the full list.

Multi-line Layout¶

You can spread sections across multiple lines by nesting arrays:

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

Each inner array becomes one line in the status display.

Exploring Colors¶

To see the available ANSI colors with a visual demo, run:

prism refract

This prints all supported colors so you can reference them when configuring plugin color settings.

Next Steps¶

Configuration — full reference for global and project config options
Plugins — all available built-in plugins and their options
Hooks — how Prism reacts to Claude Code lifecycle events