How to measure AC current in a wire without direct contact with the wire?
Depending on what the goals of the 'project' are, so what you build or buy, what you're intending to learn, a split core current transformer is hard to beat.

It can be very cheap if the core is salvaged from a dead transformer.

It's safe, as it clamps over a wire, and while a toroidal core could give slightly better performance, that would need a mains cable disconnected and reconnected to thread it through the core, not cool if you're monitoring the incoming to the house, but more practical if just monitoring a power strip.

As long as you assemble the core with good attention to getting minimum air-gap, it's very tolerant technically.

The output gain is calculable from first principles, knowing the number of secondary turns and having a small enough burden resistor. Compare measured and theory would be an interesting result of the project.