Get started
Basic plan and aboveRunning Lineman
After setup, you use Claude Code exactly as you did before. Lineman works inside your session rather than alongside it, so there is no extra prompt to write and nothing to remember.
claude or lineman
There are two ways to start a session, and the difference is how much Lineman does for you.
claudeclaude starts Claude Code as normal. Lineman's hooks compress large tool results as they happen, invisibly.
linemanlineman starts the same session under supervision. On top of the compression, it watches how full your context is getting and carries the session over before Claude Code's own compaction would truncate it, so long sessions keep more of what matters.
What Lineman actually does in a session
When a tool returns something large, Lineman summarises it with a second, cheaper model and hands Claude the summary instead of the raw bytes.
- Reading a big file returns its structure and the parts that matter, not every line.
- Build output, test runs and stack traces come back triaged, with the failures surfaced.
- Searches across many files return the matches, not the surrounding noise.
- When compressing something would lose information you need, Lineman passes it through untouched and says why.
The statusline
A statusline is installed on your first session, showing what Lineman has saved you so far. It is optional and only appears in a terminal session.
On the Free plan
Free accounts still send usage, so the Cost Explorer fills up and you can see what your team is spending. Compression is off, so sessions behave exactly as they would without Lineman installed.