README.md

July 25, 2026 · View on GitHub

The most playful way to orchestrate your agents

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Pixel Agents turns the AI coding agents running in your terminals into animated pixel-art characters working in a tiny office. They walk to their desks, sit down, type when they're editing files, read when they're searching, and flag you visually when they're stuck waiting for input.

It ships in two forms from the same codebase:

VS Code extension — VS Code Marketplace and Open VSX. Agents spawn into VS Code terminals; characters render in the panel area.
Standalone CLI — npx pixel-agents starts a local server and serves the same office as a browser app, useful for tmux, remote, and non-VS Code workflows.

The architecture is fully agent-agnostic and platform-agnostic: a typed HookProvider interface defines the integration boundary so adding a new AI tool is a single subdirectory of code. Claude Code is the reference implementation today; Codex, Gemini, Cursor, and others are on the roadmap.

Pixel Agents screenshot

Features

One agent, one character — every Claude Code terminal gets its own animated character
Live activity tracking — characters animate based on what the agent is actually doing (writing, reading, running commands)
Office layout editor — design your office with floors, walls, and furniture using a built-in editor
Speech bubbles — visual indicators when an agent is waiting for input or needs permission
Sound notifications — optional chime when an agent finishes its turn
Subagents and Agent Teams — see ephemeral subagents and persistent Claude teammates as separate characters, including team roles and lifecycle changes
Persistent layouts — your office design is saved and shared across VS Code windows
Shared layout and assets — import/export layouts and load external character, pet, and furniture packs
Areas — paint named office zones, map folders to them, and seat agents inside the area assigned to their folder
Diverse characters — 6 diverse characters. These are based on the amazing work of JIK-A-4, Metro City.

Pixel Agents characters

Where This Is Going

The vision is: play a game, build a product. Two goals follow from it: to build a familiar, intuitive interface for running and orchestrating a lot of agents; and to make the hours you spend doing it feel less like administration and more like play.

Roughly three stages get there:

Everywhere, with everything. Today it's Claude Code in VS Code or the browser. It should be whatever agent you run, wherever you work. A new CLI is a subdirectory, not a rewrite — this is where help is most useful right now.
Actually a game. Health bars for rate limits and token budgets. Scores for whatever you care about. Furniture that does things. Offices you open like save files, one per project.
Expand the orchestration frontier. Orchestrator characters. Form a team by dragging a box around them. Hand work between agents. Point them at a board and let them pick up tasks themselves.

Most of this is still ahead. See Issues and Discussions for what's open, and CONTRIBUTING.md to jump in.

Requirements

Claude Code CLI installed and configured
VS Code extension: VS Code 1.105.0 or later
Standalone CLI: Node.js 20 or later
Windows, Linux, or macOS

Getting Started

VS Code extension

Install Pixel Agents from the VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX.
Open the Pixel Agents panel beside the terminal.
Click + Agent to launch Claude Code. In a multi-root workspace, select the folder first.

To use Claude with --dangerously-skip-permissions, hover over + Agent to find the Skip permissions mode button. Only use this when you accept the security implications.

Pixel Agents also detects Claude sessions started outside the extension. Turn on Settings → Watch All Sessions to include sessions from other workspaces.

Standalone CLI

Run Pixel Agents from the workspace whose Claude sessions you want to see:

cd /path/to/your/project
npx pixel-agents

The CLI chooses a free local port and prints the URL. Standalone does not launch Claude for you; start Claude Code in a terminal for the same workspace. To install the command globally instead:

npm install --global pixel-agents
pixel-agents

Use a fixed address or port when needed:

pixel-agents --port 3100
pixel-agents --host 127.0.0.1 --port 3100
pixel-agents --help

The default bind address is 127.0.0.1. Binding to 0.0.0.0 exposes the UI and WebSocket to the local network; do this only on a trusted network.

Running multiple surfaces

The extension and standalone CLI can run at the same time. Each server registers under ~/.pixel-agents/servers/; the Claude hook script sends events to all active registrations. VS Code and standalone keep separate agents, seats, and settings while using the shared office layout.

Stop a standalone server with Ctrl+C. It removes only its own registration.

Customizing the Office

Click Layout to edit the office:

Paint floor patterns and walls, with color and contrast controls.
Place, rotate, recolor, select, and remove furniture.
Paint auto-tiling carpets and customize their main and accent colors.
Add animated pets; click a pet in the office to interact with it.
Create named Areas, paint their tiles, and assign workspace folders to them.
Undo/redo changes, then import or export the complete layout as JSON.

Layouts can grow to 64×64 tiles by clicking the ghost border outside the current grid.

Office assets

Bundled furniture, floors, walls, carpets, characters, and pets live under webview-ui/public/assets/. Furniture manifests describe sprites, rotation groups, state groups, and animation frames.

Use Settings → Add Asset Directory to load external characters, pets, and furniture. See docs/external-assets.md for furniture directory structure and manifest details. The visual asset manager at scripts/asset-manager.html helps create furniture manifests.

How It Works

Pixel Agents uses two Claude Code detection paths:

Hooks mode (default) — a hook script receives Claude events such as SessionStart, PreToolUse, PermissionRequest, and Stop. It discovers active Pixel Agents servers and sends authenticated events to each one.
Transcript mode (fallback) — the runtime scans Claude's JSONL session files under ~/.claude/projects/ when hooks are unavailable or for details not present in an event.

The Claude provider normalizes both sources into a shared AgentEvent model. AgentRuntime updates the central state store, and the active transport sends typed messages to the React webview. The office renders through Canvas 2D with pathfinding and character state machines.

Pixel Agents does not modify Claude Code. Its hook configuration and persistent data live under ~/.claude/ and ~/.pixel-agents/ respectively.

Architecture

core/ — provider, adapter, transport, schema, and AsyncAPI message contracts with no runtime side effects.
server/ — shared Fastify server, agent runtime, persistence, Claude provider, transcript scanning, and standalone CLI.
adapters/vscode/ — the VS Code terminal, persistence, and webview bridge.
webview-ui/ — React 19, Vite, Canvas 2D, and host-specific transports for VS Code and browser WebSocket clients.

The extension and CLI are bundled with esbuild; the webview is built with Vite. Unit tests use Vitest and Node's test runner, and end-to-end coverage uses Playwright against VS Code and standalone.

Development

git clone https://github.com/pixel-agents-hq/pixel-agents.git
cd pixel-agents
npm install
npm run build

Press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host. To run the standalone bundle built from source:

node dist/cli.js

Common checks:

npm run check-types
npm run lint
npm test
npm run e2e

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development workflow and e2e/README.md for the end-to-end suite.

Hosted Test Reports

Build the combined Allure report locally and stage it for Vercel:

npm run test
npm run e2e
npm run e2e -- --attach-videos-on-success
npm run vercel:prepare

Use npm run test:report to build the combined report without preparing the Vercel output, then npm run test:report:open to serve it locally.

The staged output serves the combined e2e, server, and webview Allure report at /reports/allure/; it does not include a standalone webview preview. GitHub Actions creates a Vercel Preview deployment only for same-repository pull requests targeting main. The deploy job expects VERCEL_TOKEN, VERCEL_ORG_ID, and VERCEL_PROJECT_ID secrets and skips fork pull requests.

Troubleshooting

Standalone will not start: verify Node.js 20+, omit --port to choose a free port, or select another fixed port.
An agent is missing: confirm Settings → Instant Detection (Hooks) is on and that the session belongs to the current workspace. Enable Watch All Sessions if needed.
The UI looks disconnected: open Settings → Debug View to inspect the server connection, transcript path, and latest agent data.
Extension and standalone are both running: this is supported. Current versions create separate files under ~/.pixel-agents/servers/; stopping one does not remove the other.