Get started

What you need

• Node 24 or newer, for the terminal.
• npm, which ships with Node.

Nothing local is ever paywalled. The desktop app and the terminal both show bars with no account, and an account only adds sync on top of that.

Terminal

Run the tool with nothing after it and it walks the same three steps everywhere: sign in, connect, then show bars in.

npx openlimiter

Sign in prints a short code and a link to openlimiter.com/app/cli, so the terminal never sees a password, and Enter to skip leaves the device signed out. Connect checks every agent CLI already on this machine and reports one of use current login, sign in or install for each row, and offers to run Codex's own sign in on the spot. Show bars in lists the terminal hosts this machine can draw bars into and wires whichever ones you keep.

Run openlimiter terminal on its own to reopen that last step later, openlimiter terminal show and openlimiter terminal hide to pick which connected providers actually draw a bar, and openlimiter terminal status to see what is wired. See agent context for the hosts, the grammar and the freshness marks.

A permanent install works the same way: npm install -g openlimiter, then run openlimiter.

Desktop app

The desktop app's first run draws the same three steps in its own window: create an account or skip it, connect the providers it can reach directly, then bars in the tray. The tray and its bars never require that account.

Web hub

openlimiter.com/app is account first: sign in with GitHub, Google or Microsoft, or a magic link, then connect, then bars. Open it once a terminal or the desktop app has signed you in somewhere, and it shows the same bars synced from there.

Free and Pro

Bars are free forever and need no account at all.

• An account adds sync: the current percentage on every window, kept current between every device you sign into.
• Pro adds history, alerts, the phone, more than one account per provider, and cloud metering for API spend keys.
• Every Pro surface opens a 30 day free trial, no card required.

Phone

Open the hub, choose your phone, and scan the QR code it shows. Pairing needs nothing typed. Add it to your home screen from there: Android offers to install it, and on iOS use Share, then Add to Home Screen.

Wire Claude Code by hand

openlimiter terminal does this for you. To see exactly what it writes, or to wire a machine without running it interactively, add this to Claude Code's settings.json yourself.

{
  "statusLine": {
    "type": "command",
    "command": "openlimiter statusline --host claude"
  },
  "hooks": {
    "UserPromptSubmit": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "openlimiter hook"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Contribute from source

Use the repository toolchain when you want to contribute.

git clone https://github.com/lucaswebsystems/openlimiter
cd openlimiter
pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm typecheck
pnpm test
node packages/cli/dist/bin.js demo

The build has to run before the type check, because each package resolves its neighbours through the declaration files the build produces.

Where next

A reasonable reading order

1. 1Why OpenLimiter for the problem this solves.
2. 2Supported providers for exactly how each one connects, and what OpenLimiter never does.
3. 3Agent context for the terminal hosts, the bar grammar, and what reaches your coding agent.
4. 4CLI reference for every command and exit code.