Ribbon: usage and cache status above the Claude Code prompt

Ribbon is a Claude Code plugin, a "mod" in its README's words, that draws a slim band above your prompt in every session once it's installed. It has no SKILL.md and gives Claude no instructions. Jay E of RoboNuggets publishes it under the MIT license. Its README says it reads the app's own numbers and never calls a model, so it spends no tokens.

What the band shows

• Usage left in your 7-day and 5-hour windows, as dot bars that count what remains, with the time until each resets. Under 15%, a bold LOW appears.
• Prompt cache, warm or cold. The README counts the cache as warm for an hour after your last message. Warm shows the minutes left and what your next message costs. Cold means your next message re-sends the whole chat, so the price comes first. A Show button opens a card with your idle time, the cached token count and that cost on each model.

It adapts to the terminal's width. Wide terminals get one row, narrow ones move the cache to a row of its own, and a plain terminal gets the same facts as text.

How to install it

In a Claude Code session, type:

/plugin install ribbon --marketplace robonuggets/ribbon

Answer y to add the marketplace, pick the user scope, and start a new session. From a shell, the README gives claude plugin install ribbon --marketplace robonuggets/ribbon. To remove it, run claude plugin uninstall ribbon.

The README also suggests sending the repository link to your agent with "install this". It has a section written for agents that tells them to run the shell command above and not to edit your settings file by hand. Read it before you hand the link over.

Limits

• Prices are estimates. Costs come from a price table in hooks/cache-art.ts, not from your bill. When prices change, you edit that table yourself.
• Subagents don't count. Only your main chat resets the cache clock.

When to use it

• You hit the 5-hour limit mid-task and want warning before it happens.
• You leave long sessions idle and want to know whether coming back will cost a full re-cache.

For a row you control, use a Claude Code status line script that prints the same 5-hour and 7-day figures. For what those windows allow on your plan, see how Claude Code usage limits work.

Sources

1. robonuggets/ribbon README — GitHub, accessed November 2026
2. ribbon plugin.json — GitHub, accessed November 2026