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 ▓     h a k c e r l i n e   //   animated statusline for Claude Code · v0.4.0 · release: 2026-04-17         ▓
 ▓     47 themed scenes · 13 color palettes · 10 effects · live controls · 0 runtime deps                    ▓
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hakcerline

Two-row animated statusline for Claude Code. Top row shows themed scenes — hexdumps, WarGames, BBS login prompts, nmap sweeps, AOHell, DEFCON levels, Sub7, ICQ, SecKC meetup nights — with smooth color gradients that sweep across static text. Bottom row is your session HUD: model, cost, context window, elapsed time, code delta, rate limits, and live controls.

 nmap ▸ 22/tcp open ssh  80/tcp open http  443/tcp open https ── ◐ scanning
  8% ✳  11m16s ✳ Opus 4.6 ✳ █░░░░░░░ 16% ✳ $0.19 ✳  personal/hakcerline ✳ +0/-0 ✳ [e]Nmap Sweep [t]glow /hakcerline

Pre-rendered. Stateless. Reads stdin, prints two lines, exits.

install

npm install -g hakcerline
hakcerline install

This writes the statusLine block to ~/.claude/settings.json. Restart Claude Code and the top of the terminal starts moving.

Remove it:

hakcerline uninstall

what you get

Row 1 — themed scene with color gradient animation. Text stays still, colors sweep across it at 1fps. Scenes rotate every 30 seconds by default.

Row 2 — session HUD:

  2% ✳  7m30s ✳ Opus 4.6 ✳ ███░░░░░ 38% ✳ $2.47 ✳  personal/myproj ✳ +186/-42 ✳ [e]Hexdump [t]glow /hakcerline

| segment | what | color | |---|---|---| | rate limit | 5h usage % | cyan to amber to red | | elapsed | session time | dark cyan | | model | model name | bright cyan bold | | context | token window bar | blue to amber to red | | cost | session cost USD | teal | | cwd | working dir | aqua | | lines | code added/removed | green / red | | scene | current scene [e] | pink | | effect | current effect [t] | themed | | help | /hakcerline hint | dim |

Context bar and rate limit shift from cool to warm as they fill.

live controls

Change theme, effect, or pause without leaving Claude Code:

hakcerline theme frost         # or: hakcerline t frost
hakcerline effect glow         # or: hakcerline e glow
hakcerline pause               # or: hakcerline p
hakcerline hide                # or: hakcerline h
hakcerline status              # show current config
hakcerline duration 60         # scene rotation speed

Claude Code slash commands

Type these right in the Claude Code prompt:

/hakcerline t synthwave
/hakcerline e clean
/hakcerline status
/hakcerline-help
/hakcerline-hack metasploit reverse shell   ← generate a new scene from a prompt

Changes take effect on the next tick. Config persists in ~/.config/hakcerline/config.json.

themes

13 gradient palettes. 7 vivid, 6 muted:

| theme | vibe | |---|---| | random | cycles through all (default) | | cyan_blue | cold recon, bright cyan to deep blue | | purple_pink | synthwave, purple to hot pink | | green_cyan | matrix, forest to cyan | | fire | red to orange to yellow to white | | ocean | deep navy to bright cyan | | synthwave | pink to purple to blue to purple | | matrix | green to yellow to green | | mono | clean grayscale, white to gray | | ember | dark muted reds, burnt orange | | frost | pale icy blues and whites | | steel | cool grays, barely-there blue tint | | amber | warm gold and honey tones | | dusk | muted purple-blue twilight |

effects

10 per-character color effects:

| effect | what it does | |---|---| | glow | bold brightened gradient (default) | | clean | static palette gradient, zero animation | | solid | single color from palette midpoint | | wave | gradient scrolls across the line | | rain | random bright flashes over dim base | | decrypt | characters reveal progressively from scrambled | | sparkle | random highlights shimmer over shifting gradient | | beams | light beam sweeps left to right | | nfo | ANSI art chars get color, regular text stays gray | | hack | ANSI art chars decrypt-scramble, text stays muted | | auto | cycles effect per scene |

effect tester

Preview all effects side by side:

hakcerline test               # static snapshot, all effects x all palettes
hakcerline test frost          # static, frost palette only
hakcerline test live           # animated with scrolling wave sample
hakcerline test live synthwave # animated, specific palette

The test mode uses tiled oscilloscope waves (▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█▇▆▅▄▃▂▁) that scroll smoothly so you can see exactly how each effect renders in motion.

the 47 scenes

| pack | count | what's in it | |---|---|---| | core | 7 | matrix_rain, wargames, nmap_sweep, bbs_login, packet_race, jp_fence, hacker_typer | | infosec | 10 | traceroute, wardialer, sine_scroller, irc_channel, hexdump, ssh_brute, dns_exfil, enigma, defcon_level, metasploit | | oldschool | 10 | blue_box, warez_nfo, l0phtcrack, morris_worm, cdc_bo, phrack, red_box, sub7, manifesto, mitnick | | aol | 10 | aohell, aol_chatroom, lord, tradewars, mud_session, icq, aim, napster, mirc_xdcc, winnuke | | seckc | 10 | meetup_night, schedule, cyberraid0, badge_pirates, seckcoin, discord, venue_history, talks, rexkc, stitches |

creating custom scenes

from a prompt (Claude Code)

With the /hakcerline-hack slash command, describe what you want and Claude generates the scene:

/hakcerline-hack wireshark packet capture with DNS queries
/hakcerline-hack kubernetes pod status dashboard
/hakcerline-hack retro BBS door game

The scene gets saved to your custom scenes directory and joins the rotation immediately.

by hand

Drop JSON files in ~/.config/hakcerline/scenes/. They join rotation automatically.

{
  "id": "my_scene",
  "name": "My Scene",
  "pack": "custom",
  "frames": [
    " ACME Corp ▸ Jenkins: 47 passing  Prod: healthy  On-call: nobody ── ◐              ",
    " ACME Corp ▸ Jenkins: 47 passing  Prod: healthy  On-call: nobody ── ◓              ",
    " ACME Corp ▸ Jenkins: 46 passing 1 FAILING  Prod: DEGRADED  On-call: you ── ◑      ",
    " ACME Corp ▸ Jenkins: 46 passing 1 FAILING  Prod: DEGRADED  On-call: you ── ◒      "
  ]
}

scene rules

1. 30-60 frames per scene
2. Small changes between consecutive frames: spinner tick (◐◓◑◒), counter increment, cursor blink, new data point
3. No scrolling/marquee — text stays in place, only color animates
4. No pipes | │ as separators. Use (spaces), · (dot), ▸ (arrow), ── (dash)
5. Pad to 120 chars with trailing spaces
6. Use wave chars ▁▂▃▄▅▆▇█ for visualizer/meter sections — they look great with color effects
7. Frames are pre-rendered strings. Runtime pads/truncates to terminal width.

how it works

flowchart LR
  CC[Claude Code] -- session JSON --> STDIN[stdin]
  STDIN --> P[parseInput]
  P --> CFG[loadConfig]
  CFG --> SCENES[loadScenes]
  SCENES --> PICK[getSceneAndFrame\nwall clock]
  PICK --> FIT[fitToWidth]
  FIT --> FX[colorizeScene\neffect + palette]
  FX --> R1[row 1 · scene]
  P --> INFO[buildInfoRowStyled\nrate · elapsed · model\nctx bar · cost · cwd\nlines · scene · effect]
  INFO --> R2[row 2 · HUD]
  R1 --> OUT[stdout 2 lines]
  R2 --> OUT
  OUT --> CC

The statusline command runs every 1 second (refreshInterval: 1). It reads Claude Code's session JSON from stdin, picks a scene frame based on wall clock time, applies a color effect, builds the HUD row, and prints two lines to stdout. Stateless — no background process, no daemon, no sockets.

animation model

• Text: static. Scenes hold their text still. Small updates (spinners, counters) advance ~1 per 2 seconds.
• Color: the gradient effect sweeps across the static text at 1 step per second, matched to Claude Code's 1-second refresh interval.
• Scene rotation: every duration seconds (default 30), a new scene and palette position kicks in.

This means the animation is smooth and readable — no jarring frame jumps, no seizure-inducing flicker.

config

~/.config/hakcerline/config.json:

{
  "packs": ["all"],
  "duration": 30,
  "theme": "random",
  "effect": "glow",
  "paused": false,
  "customScenesDir": "~/.config/hakcerline/scenes",
  "exclude": [],
  "only": null
}

| field | default | what it does | |---|---|---| | packs | ["all"] | core, infosec, oldschool, aol, seckc, all | | duration | 30 | seconds per scene before cycling | | theme | random | color palette name or random | | effect | glow | effect name or null for auto-cycle | | paused | false | freeze the scene row | | customScenesDir | null | extra directory with your own scene JSONs | | exclude | [] | scene IDs to skip | | only | null | if set, only run these scene IDs |

prior art & acks

• ccusage — the Claude Code cost/rate tracker. The info row reads the same stdin JSON shape ccusage exposes. If you want numbers without scenery, use ccusage directly.
• terminaltexteffects — the TTE pip module. The color effects and gradient palettes are ported from TTE to pure TypeScript with zero runtime deps.
• hakcer — the terminal ASCII bling pip module that inspired this one. Different surface area, same spirit.

testimonials (totally real)

"Finally a statusline that understands me. I pressed Enter and a blue box played a 2600Hz tone. My phreak ancestors wept." — anon, somewhere with a payphone

"The DEFCON scene cycled to DEFCON 1 during a prod incident. Spooky. Shipped the fix anyway." — SRE, regrets nothing

"My intern thought hakcerline was an exploit kit. I let them think that." — red team lead

"Works on my BBS." — sysop, WWIV user

license

MIT. Use it. Fork it. Ship custom scene packs for your company's on-call dashboard. Send them back as a PR if they're good.

GREETZ

SecKC · Badge Pirates · 2600Hz crew · every sysop who ever kicked a lamer for asking /who twice · PHRACK · CCC · the ghost of bo2k · everyone still typing at 300 baud in their heart

   ▀▄ GREETZ also go out to /dev/null, which never said a word but listened every time ▄▀