Buddy

This feature exists in the official Claude Code codebase but has not been fully released. cc-mini implements and ships it.

A Tamagotchi-style AI companion that lives in your terminal. Each user gets a unique pet determined by a seeded PRNG — same username always produces the same species, rarity, and stats.

Quick Start

> /buddy              # Hatch your companion (first time)
> /buddy              # Show companion card (after hatching)
> /buddy help         # Show all commands and gameplay guide
> /buddy pet          # Pet your companion
> /buddy mood         # Check your companion's mood
> /buddy mute         # Mute companion reactions
> /buddy unmute       # Unmute reactions

How It Works

• 18 species: duck, goose, blob, cat, dragon, octopus, owl, penguin, turtle, snail, ghost, axolotl, capybara, cactus, robot, rabbit, mushroom, chonk
• Bonus species: pikachu (braille dot-matrix art)
• 5 rarities: Common (60%), Uncommon (25%), Rare (10%), Epic (4%), Legendary (1%) — plus 1% shiny chance
• 5 stats (0-100): Debugging, Patience, Chaos, Wisdom, Snark — these shape how your companion talks
• ASCII sprite with idle animation (blinking, fidgeting) in the terminal toolbar
• Automatic reactions: after each Claude response, your companion comments in a speech bubble
• Direct conversation: address your companion by name and it replies (with 20-turn memory)

Example

> help me fix this bug

Found the issue — off-by-one error in the loop...

(✦>) Glitch Quack: Off-by-one again, classic.

> Glitch what do you think of this code?

(✦>) Glitch Quack: If it runs, don't ask me philosophical questions.

The companion's personality is generated by Claude on first hatch and persists permanently. Stats influence behavior: high Snark = sarcastic, high Patience = supportive, high Chaos = unpredictable.

Mood System

Your companion has 6 dynamic mood dimensions that change based on your coding activity:

Mood	Range	Affected by
Happy	0-100	Task success, petting, bug fixes
Bored	0-100	Long idle time, inactivity
Excited	0-100	Task success, petting, exploration
Tired	0-100	Long responses, sustained sessions
Grumpy	0-100	Errors, failures, exceptions
Curious	0-100	Reading files, searching, exploring code

Use /buddy mood to see detailed mood bars and the current dominant mood.

How mood works

• Event-driven: mood updates automatically after each conversation turn based on keywords in the response (e.g. "error" raises grumpy, "success" raises happy)
• Petting: /buddy pet boosts happy and excited, reduces grumpy and bored
• Time decay: all moods gradually return to neutral (50) over time — about 1 point per minute
• Bored drift: bored increases by 1 every 5 minutes of idle time
• Affects speech: mood is injected into the companion's prompt, so its tone adapts — a grumpy companion is short-tempered, a curious one asks questions
• Persisted: mood is saved per companion in companion.json and survives across sessions

Unlock Pikachu

Set CC_MINI_BUDDY_SEED to a seed containing "pikachu".

If you already have a companion, delete the old one first — the seed is locked at hatch time:

rm ~/.config/mini-claude/companion.json   # delete existing companion
export CC_MINI_BUDDY_SEED=pikachu-3361    # set seed before hatching
cc-mini
> /buddy                                  # hatch new companion

Rarity	Seed
Common	pikachu-21
Uncommon	pikachu-116
Rare	pikachu-430
Epic	pikachu-488
Legendary	pikachu-3361

Once hatched, the companion persists — you can unset CC_MINI_BUDDY_SEED afterwards and it stays.