Claudial

Claudial is a desk display for Claude subscription usage. It shows the current five-hour and seven-day utilization, reset times, spending pace, data freshness, and battery state on a Waveshare ESP32-S3-Touch-AMOLED-2.16.

The display does not hold Claude credentials or access the network. A small Linux user service obtains usage, finds the display over BLE, synchronizes its RTC, and sends a fresh snapshot once a minute.

Requirements

• The Waveshare board connected over its USB-JTAG port for flashing.
• Rust, the esp toolchain installed by espup, and probe-rs.
• A Linux host with BlueZ that remains near the display.
• Either Claude Code logged in on that host, or access to a claude-proxy-rs instance.

Flash the display

The firmware has its own toolchain and Cargo configuration, so build it from inside firmware/:

cd firmware
cargo build --release
probe-rs download --chip esp32s3 --preverify --verify --reset \
  target/xtensa-esp32s3-none-elf/release/claudial-firmware
cd ..

This is needed for initial installation and after firmware changes. During firmware development, cargo run --release additionally attaches RTT logging; disconnect the probe before evaluating BLE stability.

Install the host service

Build only the daemon, install it for the current user, and enable the supplied systemd unit:

cargo build --release -p claudial-host
install -Dm755 target/release/claudial-host ~/.local/bin/claudial-host
install -Dm644 systemd/claudial-host.service \
  ~/.config/systemd/user/claudial-host.service
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now claudial-host.service

The service starts with the user session, reconnects automatically when the display returns, and keeps all credentials on the host.

Choose the usage source

claude-code is the default. It rereads Claude Code's rotating credential from ~/.claude/.credentials.json and makes one minimal Anthropic request per minute while the display is connected, using only its rate-limit headers.

claude-proxy instead reads the snapshot already cached by claude-proxy-rs. On Plasma it reuses the proxy URL, username, and password stored by claude-plasmoid in KWallet, without creating another copy of the admin password.

To use it for the service, create the override directory:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/claudial-host.service.d

Then save the following as ~/.config/systemd/user/claudial-host.service.d/usage-source.conf:

[Service]
Environment=CLAUDIAL_USAGE_SOURCE=claude-proxy

Then apply the override:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user restart claudial-host.service

For foreground or non-Plasma use, the same source accepts CLAUDIAL_PROXY_URL, CLAUDIAL_PROXY_USERNAME, and CLAUDIAL_PROXY_PASSWORD when all three are set. The source can also be selected for a foreground run with claudial-host --usage-source claude-proxy.

Operation

systemctl --user status claudial-host.service
journalctl --user -u claudial-host.service -f
systemctl --user restart claudial-host.service

To update the daemon after pulling changes, rebuild claudial-host, reinstall the binary, and restart the service. Reflash the board only when the firmware has changed.

Repository layout

• firmware/ — ESP32-S3 firmware and Slint UI.
• claudial-host/ — Linux BLE and usage daemon.
• claudial-icd/ — shared wire types, display settings, and pace calculation.

Claudial was inspired by Clawdmeter, but is an independent implementation and does not reuse its artwork.