Where the numbers come from
For the Claude Code account in use, pitboard asks Anthropic with Claude Code’s login; for any other, with its parked login. For accounts used with OpenAI’s Codex CLI, pitboard sends OpenAI Codex’s own usage request, which counts against no limit. Until you enrol a Codex account, pitboard asks OpenAI nothing. Work on other machines counts too, as What a switch costs you explains. Between answers, pitboard shows its newest numbers and when they were measured. For the Claude Code account in use, those can be Claude Code’s own:from Claude Code, measured 14:02.
How often pitboard asks
pitboard asks about an account again only once 1% of its shortest limit’s window has passed. That is 3 minutes for a five-hour limit, about 1 hour 41 minutes for a weekly one and 1 minute with no reading yet. The command line and the app share one record of when each account was asked. Runningpitboard twice in a row asks about each account at most once.
When a service asks for less traffic, pitboard waits the time it names, or else 1 minute, doubling up to 1 hour. If it is unreachable or returns an error, the wait is 30 seconds, doubling up to 15 minutes.
The app reads usage when it starts, every 5 minutes and when your Mac wakes. Clicking pitboard’s item in the menu bar reads again if the last read is at least a minute old.
Within seconds, and without asking any service, the app shows a switch made in a terminal and numbers that other runs of pitboard record.
pitboard status --fresh and Refresh in pitboard’s menu or the Accounts pane ask about every account anyway, and try again a service that could not be reached. They do not ask through a wait a service asked for.
One reading per account
The command line and the app record into one reading per account and show it. Claude Code’s status line does too, for Claude Code accounts. A reading only moves forward. A later reset is a newer window. Within one window, usage only rises, so the higher percentage is newer. After a plan upgrade mid-window, the service reports a lower percentage. The old, higher one stands until that window resets.How long an account lasts
A line under each account says how long it lasts at its recent rate. At 73% of its weekly limit, an account can last days if it was at 70% this morning, or hours if it was at 40%. From the past 14 days of readings, pitboard works out when each limit fills. The line shows that or a reset, whichever comes first:about 48m left at this rate or resets in 3h 02m.
pitboard shows no estimate until it has three readings over at least 15 minutes. A wrong one would tell you to switch needlessly.
What the status line adds
When Claude Code’s status line runspitboard statusline, each session passes it the account’s usage. pitboard records it, so pitboard, the app and idle sessions show what busy sessions report.
A session’s numbers do not name their account. pitboard records them only if they moved since the session’s last run and Claude Code’s config named the same account both times. It records nothing in the 33 seconds an open session can take to follow a switch.