FAQ
These are the questions people usually ask before installing Headroom or recommending it to a team.
Headroom is a macOS menu bar app for developers who use AI coding agents like Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. It cuts token usage by ~50% — roughly 2x more usage on the plan you already pay for — by reversibly compressing the tool output, logs, and boilerplate that bloat each prompt, all locally on your machine. It is built on the open-source Headroom CLI (https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom/).
Yes. Headroom's compression engine is the open-source Headroom CLI on GitHub at https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom/, free to self-install. The macOS desktop app (headroom-desktop) is built on top of it with the endorsement of the CLI's maintainer; you can find it at https://github.com/gglucass/headroom-desktop.
Headroom is a menu bar app that reduces Claude Code token usage by reversibly compressing tool output, boilerplate, and large inputs before Claude Code stores them in the conversation. The plan you already pay for lasts longer, and Claude can pull the original content back if it needs it.
Yes, within measurement error. On the open-source benchmark suite, compressed context scores 0.919 F1 with 98.2% recall on HTML extraction, retrieves 4/4 needles from JSON log haystacks, and slightly improves QA F1 on SQuAD v2 and HotpotQA. And because compression is reversible, the model can always pull the original content back if it needs it.
No. Headroom's compression is reversible. When it shrinks a tool output or an older message, it includes a small retrieval tool that lets Claude pull back the original content on demand, so nothing is actually thrown away. Retrieval only fires when the model actually needs that detail, so instead of re-paying for the full content on every turn, you carry the compressed version and expand the occasional slice once — which is where the net savings come from.
No. Headroom is designed to preserve the cached prefix of your conversation. Tool outputs are compressed before they enter the conversation history, and stale messages later in the thread are compressed without altering the prefix Anthropic has already cached. The maintainer of the underlying Headroom CLI has reported around a 97% prefix cache hit rate from production usage.
Production data from the underlying Headroom CLI puts median overhead at roughly 52 milliseconds per request, on par with a single network round-trip and small compared to the seconds Claude itself takes to respond. Most people do not notice it.
No. Headroom is privacy-first and runs locally on your machine, so your prompts do not need to be shipped to a Headroom server for optimization.
Headroom is designed for developers who rely on Claude Code or Codex and want about 2x as much usage on the plan they already pay for by cutting token waste and keeping large codebase sessions efficient without changing their workflow.
Yes. Sub-agents in Claude Code lose the parent session's prefix-cache benefit and can hit their own token limits quickly once tool output piles up. Headroom compresses sub-agent tool output the same way it compresses the main session, so the same task fits in fewer tokens.
Ponytail is one of Headroom's one-click add-ons: a skill that nudges Claude Code and Codex to write the least code possible, attacking the output-token side of the bill that input-focused tools leave untouched. It works with both Claude Code and Codex, supports intensity levels (lite, full, ultra), and turns on from the Add-ons screen in the Headroom app.
Yes. Headroom supports OpenAI Codex as a first-class connector alongside Claude Code. Enable Codex in the app and Headroom routes the Codex CLI through the same local optimization proxy, compressing tool output and boilerplate before it reaches the model. It also tracks your Codex subscription usage windows so you can see how much of your 5-hour and weekly limits you have left.
No. Headroom works with the Claude Code CLI and the Claude Code IDE extensions (such as the VS Code extension), but not with the Claude desktop app. The desktop app does not route its traffic through Headroom's local proxy, so its usage cannot be optimized.
Headroom currently offers a macOS app.
Yes. Headroom for desktop is based on the open-source Headroom CLI project (https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom/), and headroom-desktop is created with the endorsement of the Headroom CLI maintainer.
Headroom's compression engine is the open-source Headroom CLI (https://github.com/headroomlabs-ai/headroom/), which is free to self-install. The desktop app was built with the endorsement of the CLI's creator, Tejas Chopra. You're paying for the packaged macOS app, signed and notarized builds, automatic updates, the menu-bar UI and stats, and ongoing support — not for the open-source engine itself.
Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial. Paid plans match your Claude or Codex tier and are priced at a small fraction of the subscription they stretch — since Headroom roughly doubles your usage, each plan pays for itself many times over. See the pricing section on the homepage for current numbers; founder discounts apply while spots last and stay locked in for as long as you keep your subscription.
Download the app, enter your email, and your 7-day free trial starts in the app — no credit card required. During the trial you get full optimization, and your coding tools keep working normally throughout. When the trial ends, pick the plan that matches your Claude or ChatGPT tier to keep optimizing; there is no free plan after the trial.
Headroom is a signed, notarized macOS menu bar app that routes Claude Code and Codex through a local proxy on your machine. Turn it off or quit it and they talk to their APIs exactly as before — your setup is untouched. Uninstalling is dragging the app to the Trash.
Start with the 7-day free trial, compare token usage before and after installing it, and look at sessions that involve verbose tool output like code search, logs, HTML, or long documentation, since those are the areas where optimization tends to help most. If your normal workload lands around 50% lower token usage, that is effectively about 2x as much Claude Code usage on the Claude plan you already pay for.
Read the guide to reducing Claude Code costs, the Claude Code usage guide, or the Claude Code usage limits page if you keep hitting the 5-hour cap. On Codex, see the guide to reducing Codex costs and the Codex usage limits page. If you want context on why the bill feels high, see why Claude Code is so expensive or how to reduce Claude API costs. Or check the benchmark section and install Headroom to measure on a session of your own.
7-day free trial · no credit card required
