codex-token-tracker-nodejs16

The Node.js 16 build of codex-token-tracker — the menu bar / system tray app and headless agent that tracks OpenAI Codex token usage, cache hits, model mix and API-equivalent cost, and syncs it to your team dashboard.

Same application sources, commands, wire protocol and version number. Readers that rely on built-in runtime modules are available only when the process exposes them:

| | codex-token-tracker | codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 | |---|---|---| | Node | 20 or newer | 16.8 or newer (also runs on 18 / 20 / 22) | | Core features and text-format sources | all | all | | Current SQLite sources | when the runtime provides node:sqlite | when the runtime provides node:sqlite | | Codex/OpenClaw/DeepSeek Harness compressed sessions | supported | supported (bundled Zstandard fallback) | | Dashboard / wire protocol | identical | identical |

Use the regular package unless your machine is pinned to Node 16. This one exists for build boxes and older dev machines whose OS cannot go past Node 16.

Install

npx codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 login   # first time: sign in and approve the device
npx codex-token-tracker-nodejs16         # then: menu bar app, or headless agent where there is no display
# or install it: npm install -g codex-token-tracker-nodejs16, then `codex-tracker`

It installs the same codex-token-tracker and codex-tracker commands as the regular package, plus codex-token-tracker-node16 if you need to disambiguate. Because the command names overlap, install one of the two packages per machine, not both.

Everything else — commands, configuration, sources, sync, rate limits, what gets uploaded — is documented in the main README.

Why a separate package

Node 16 reached end of life in September 2023 and never shipped a global fetch. Rather than hold the main package back, the Node 16 support lives here:

• One source tree. This package contains no application code. Its build bundles ../menubar/src — the exact same sources the Node 20 package ships — so the two cannot drift apart in features.

• target: node16. esbuild downlevels any syntax Node 16 cannot parse.

• A polyfill prelude. dist/node16-polyfill.js is prepended to every Node-side bundle and installs the web globals Node 16 lacks, sourced from undici — which is the very implementation Node 18 adopted as its built-in fetch:

  | Global | Source | Missing before | |---|---|---| | fetch, Headers, Request, Response, FormData, File | undici | Node 18 | | Blob | node:buffer | Node 18 | | ReadableStream, WritableStream, TransformStream | node:stream/web | Node 18 | | crypto (WebCrypto) | node:crypto | Node 19 | | structuredClone | node:v8 | Node 17 |

  Every one is installed only if absent, so the same bundle is unchanged on newer Node and inside Electron — where the polyfill is a no-op.

Requirements and caveats

• Node >= 16.8. 16.8 is the first release undici's fetch supports; 16.20.2 is the last 16.x. Running an older Node prints a clear message instead of a syntax error.
• Electron is not an npm dependency of this package. Node 16's npm (8.x) aborts an entire global install when an optional dependency's install script fails, so on a machine that could not reach GitHub the tracker could not be installed at all — not even for headless use — and the retry died with Cannot find module …/node_modules/electron/install.js. Since 0.2.2, npm install -g never runs Electron's installer. On a machine with a display, the first codex-tracker (or codex-tracker menubar) downloads the runtime itself — about 100 MB, once — into ~/.codex-tracker/electron/<version>/, honouring ELECTRON_MIRROR (for example https://npmmirror.com/mirrors/electron/) and HTTPS_PROXY. Without a display the app runs headless — codex-tracker agent — which does all the tracking and uploading and never touches Electron. If your OS is too old for Electron 38, install an older one alongside (npm i -g electron@22): a globally installed electron is picked up first, and the renderer is built for Chromium 108 so it still works.
• Current Kilo, Hermes and OpenClaw SQLite sources are skipped in a Node 16 process, because they need node:sqlite. The tracker still uses any attributable legacy JSON/JSONL or VS Code task fallback it finds. OpenClaw-managed Codex rollouts are diagnostic-only because their OAuth token is injected in memory and is not persisted alongside them. The module arrived in Node 22.5, so a Node 20 headless process has the same limitation; the current Electron runtime can read these databases even when launched by this compatibility package.
• Compressed histories remain supported on Node 16. Codex/OpenClaw .jsonl.zst rollouts and DeepSeek Harness .jsonl.zstd sessions prefer native Zstandard when available and otherwise use the bundled decoder. Plain .jsonl remains supported too.
• Self-update stays on this package. codex-tracker update checks and installs codex-token-tracker-nodejs16, never the Node 20 package.

Development

Built from the monorepo; it needs ../menubar/src present.

pnpm --filter codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 build          # dev build
pnpm --filter codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 build:release   # what prepack/publish runs
pnpm --filter codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 typecheck
pnpm --filter codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 test            # suites on the current Node
pnpm --filter codex-token-tracker-nodejs16 test:node16      # suites on a real Node 16

test:node16 finds the newest Node 16 under ~/.nvm/versions/node, or uses NODE16_BIN. It runs the upstream suites against the node16 bundle, with node:test mapped onto a small shim since Node 16 has no test runner.

End-to-end

pnpm e2e:node16            # from the repo root
pnpm e2e:node16:gui        # also downloads Electron (~100 MB) and launches the tray app

This does what a user does: builds a release, packs a tarball, installs it with Node 16's own npm under --engine-strict, and drives the installed binary on a real Node 16 — 36 checks across the polyfill, the CLI surface, the self-updater and a headless agent cycle.

The load-bearing assertion is differential: the same synthetic Codex fixtures are fed to both the Node 16 build (on Node 16) and the Node 20 build (on your Node), and the two status --json reports must be byte-identical once timestamps are masked. A port that silently drops a source, mis-parses a number or takes a different branch cannot pass that.

The run is hermetic — CODEX_TRACKER_HOME sends config, state and the update cache to a temp dir (so the run is signed out and nothing can upload), CODEX_HOME and friends point the scanner at fixtures rather than your real sessions, and local stub servers stand in for the npm registry and the dashboard, so it needs no network. It restores your dev builds and deletes its scratch directory on the way out; pass --keep to inspect it.

The version is kept identical to codex-token-tracker by scripts/sync-version.mjs, which every build runs.

License

MIT © Chen Li