Two problems, one restructure. The sidebar's bottom is a five-layer pile where navigation, telemetry and meta all read as the same kind of row; and the subscription quota strip sits in that pile looking bolted-on. This doc reorders the stack so each zone has one grammar, then explores where quota should live across the whole window — header, main pane, popover-only — before recommending the footer status row.
One grammar per zone. All projects and Archived stop being footer furniture and become list terminators — the quiet end of the session scroll they continue. The footer keeps exactly two rows: telemetry, then meta.
Usage is status, not navigation. A 28px row of mono numbers and 2.5px bars, styled like a status-bar segment. Clicking opens the detail popover; it never navigates, so it never competes with sessions.
Escalation is color only. Muted → amber → danger on identical geometry. A warning never reflows the sidebar; blocked adds a reset time in the same slot, not a banner.
Absence is first-class. API-key accounts, no daemon, no snapshot yet — the row is simply gone and the hairlines close up. Every placement in this doc tolerates "not present" without a hole.
The old pile — All projects / Archived / quota strip / help / gear+version — becomes three zones. Nav rows join the scroll as terminators after Recent, with counts in mono. The footer is telemetry plus one meta row (Help & support · version · settings). Usage reads left-to-right as 5h ▰ 72% · 7d ▰ 41%: label, thin bar, mono percent — the same vocabulary as the detail popover it opens.
The low window turns amber — label, bar, percent — and the countdown appears on the right. Same 28px, no reflow.
0% in danger ink, empty bar on a danger-tinted track, reset time in the countdown slot. The row states the fact; the popover (3) states the consequence.
No snapshot, no row. The meta row closes the footer and nothing looks missing.
All three work; none wins. Quota is account-scope telemetry, so it belongs in app chrome — not beside a machine name, not inside a session's header, and not hidden until it becomes an alarm. The footer status row in 1 stays the recommendation.
Outer ring 5h, inner ring 7d, sitting between the machine name and the bell. Zero footprint, always visible — but it sits in a row that speaks for one machine while quota belongs to the account, and two unlabeled 16px rings can be noticed, never read. Hover would have to do all the work.
Most glanceable of the three — it sits on the eye line you already use for session status. That is also the problem: a chip inside a session's header implies session-scoped cost, it competes with the transcript's top-right, and it would duplicate the day the main pane splits.
The quietest chrome: usage lives under the account in the settings popover, and the sidebar shows nothing at all until a window runs low — then a one-line amber strip surfaces above the meta row. Clean, but burn-down is invisible day to day; the first time most users meet quota is as an alarm, or a hard 0%.
The strip is the only escalation chrome this variant owns — it appears, links to the popover, and leaves when the window resets.
Two window rows — name, rolling span in mono, percent left — each with a full-width bar and a mono reset countdown. Below the hairline: staleness (updated 3m ago) and a manual Refresh. Row heights and inks match the footer row, so opening the popover reads as zooming into the same instrument.
A danger strip states the consequence and the reset time — resets at 14:00 — while the weekly window stays readable and Refresh stays live. The footer row underneath shows the same 0% in the same ink.