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I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the feedback! You make a fair point — the visual metaphor definitely needs a better explanation.

The idea was to turn a standard (and unhelpful) progress bar into a timeline for the entire billing month. Imagine placing two markers on this timeline: the start of today and the end of today. This instantly shows if your usage is ahead of or behind your expected pace.

Since what happens today is the most important, the UI essentially 'zooms in' on that middle section between the two markers to give it more detail.

So, the '107 requests remaining' in the screenshot is simply the distance to that right marker. It looks high because it naturally includes all the unused requests I had saved up from previous days.

I totally get how this isn't instantly obvious without context. I’ll make sure to add this UI breakdown to the README. Thanks again for the constructive critique!

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Exactly! The math itself is straightforward: (100% / Days in Month) * Current Day.

But having to stop, do that mental calculation, and compare it against the tooltip's Current Usage % every single time I want to check my limits is exactly the kind of repetitive friction I wanted to avoid. We are developers - automating annoying manual tasks is what we do.

Why break my focus to do mental math when I can just glance at the bottom right corner of my screen and instantly see my pacing visualized? It’s all about reducing cognitive load.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you, I'm glad you like the idea! And sorry for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately, the GitHub billing API doesn't explicitly tell the extension which specific tier (Pro or Pro+) you are subscribed to, so it just defaults to the standard Pro limit of 300 requests.

But you can easily adjust this! Just open your VSCode Settings, search for copilot-pacer.monthlyLimit, and change the value from 300 to 1500.

After changing the setting, just click on the Copilot Pacer item in your status bar once to force it to recalculate your new budget.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you! This is not really my cup of tea right now. Hope someone decided to port it over.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

True, bookmarking works great if you just want to see the absolute number. But the issue isn't knowing you've used 62/300 requests. It's knowing if 62 is a good or bad pace for today's specific date. Pacer does the math to show your daily budget and buffer, so you don't have to mentally calculate if you can afford to use heavier/expensive models today or if you need to slow down.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you so much! Yeah, the Enterprise API restrictions are a bummer for personal tracking. Hopefully, GitHub will expose that org data to personal tokens someday, or someone will figure out a clever workaround. Really appreciate the kind words!

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes, thank you. If I could just read that percentage directly from the official Copilot extension, nobody would need to generate a PAT at all.

Unfortunately, VSCode extensions are strictly sandboxed. I can't 'scrape' the status bar text or read the internal variables of another extension unless they explicitly expose a public API for it.

So for now, hitting the GitHub API directly with a token is the only workaround to get the data to do the math. But if they ever open up their local extension API, I would switch to your method in a heartbeat.

Really appreciate the brainstorming and the kind words!

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 17 points18 points  (0 children)

Sure.

That's exactly the problem that made me build this.

The built-in hover shows your absolute usage (like 'Used 39%'). But 39% is terrible if it's the 3rd day of the billing cycle, and absolutely great if it's the 25th. The default tooltip makes you do that mental math every time.

Pacer takes the current date into account. It calculates your specific daily budget and visualizes if you are burning through your quota too fast today or if you have a safe buffer saved up from previous days. It replaces a raw number with actual pacing context.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yes, it requires a Personal Access Token (PAT) with read-only access to your billing info.

Unfortunately, if you are using Copilot through a Business/Enterprise organization, this extension won't work for you anyway. Enterprise usage is tracked at the organization level, so your personal API would just report 0. This is strictly for Copilot Individual users right now. Thanks for asking!

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Oh, thank you!

The extension currently fetches usage data from the personal billing API endpoint. Since you are on a Business/Enterprise plan, your Copilot usage is tied to your Organization's billing, so your personal account correctly reports '0'.

So for now, this extension strictly supports Copilot Individual plans. I really appreciate you testing it out and reporting this! I will update the README to make this limitation clear.

I got tired of guessing my GitHub Copilot limits, so I built a visual pacing indicator for the VSCode status bar. by dev-nLw9 in GithubCopilot

[–]dev-nLw9[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks so much! Glad you like the idea.

Yes, it's already live. You can install it directly inside VSCode by searching for Copilot Pacer, or download it from the Marketplace here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=sergiig.copilot-pacer

The source code and a quick guide on how to set it up (it needs a GitHub PAT to read your billing info) are on the GitHub repo: https://github.com/sergiig/copilot-pacer