Native context awareness for Claude and users

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

Currently, Claude Code has no native way to:

1. Let Claude know how much context window is being used
2. Let users easily see context usage status
3. Trigger actions when context reaches certain thresholds

We had to build a complex workaround using:

• Status line script to read context_window.used_percentage and write to file
• Stop hook to check thresholds and create trigger files
• Manual CLAUDE.md instructions for Claude to check trigger files
• ANSI color codes for visual alerts

This requires 5 shell scripts + 3 config files + multiple hours of debugging to achieve what should be a
simple built-in feature.

Proposed Solution

1. Expose context percentage to Claude directly

• Allow Claude to access context.percent or similar variable
• No need for external file-based workarounds

1. Built-in threshold alerts

• Configurable thresholds (e.g., 30%, 60%, 90%, 99%)
• Visual indicator in status line when threshold crossed
• Optional hook trigger on threshold

1. Declarative configuration

```json
{
"contextAlerts": {
"thresholds": [30, 60, 90, 99],
"showInStatusLine": true,
"onThreshold": ".claude/scripts/on-threshold.sh"
}
}

Alternative Solutions

_No response_

Priority

Critical - Blocking my work

Feature Category

CLI commands and flags

Use Case Example

_No response_

Additional Context

Why This Matters

• For users: Know when to save/summarize conversation before context runs out
• For Claude: Make better decisions about response length and complexity
• For productivity: Avoid losing important context due to unexpected truncation