Pet Agents

A pixel pet in your VS Code sidebar that acts out what your AI coding agent is doing, live. It reads files with a magnifying glass, types on a laptop, watches the washing machine while your tests run, throws a tantrum when a tool call fails and puts on a party hat when the task is done. When the agent starts sub-agents, mini pets pop out with funny names and their task written underneath.

Works with Claude Code out of the box, and with Cursor, Codex, OpenCode and Kiro through peon-ping. Read-only, offline, no account.

Install

In VS Code, open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X), search for Pet Agents and click Install. Or press Ctrl+P and run:

ext install NorthPandaLabs.pet-agents

Then open the Explorer sidebar: your pet lives in the Pet Agents panel. Drag the panel taller if it feels cramped, especially when sub-agents are running.

Pick your pet

A fox, cat, dog or bird, each drawn in code as recolourable pixel art.

Run Pet Agents: Customize Pet for a menu of everything below. Every change shows up live and the menu stays open so you can keep tweaking. There is also Randomize look and Reset look to defaults.

• Colours: fur, belly/muzzle, eyes and accessory. Pick a preset or any CSS colour (#ff8800, hotpink, rebeccapurple...).
• Patterns: spots, stripes, white socks, bandit mask, eye patch.
• Accessories: bow, flower, crown, beanie, headphones, glasses, sunglasses, bandana, scarf, collar with a bell tag. Hats step aside when a state needs the party hat or nightcap.
• Art style: smooth (rounded, soft edges) or pixel (crisp retro blocks).
• Ask your AI. Tell your agent something like "give my VS Code pet a gold crown and blue eyes". It edits your settings and the pet changes immediately.

Your pet acts out the agent

Each state has its own pose, expression, prop and a ring of emojis orbiting the pet. By default the pet is also tinted and glows with a colour for the state: purple for thinking, blue for writing, red for errors, gold when done (pet-agents.stateColors).

The pet also blinks, wags its tail (or flaps its wings), twitches its ears, and wakes up with a stretch and a yawn when work starts.

Once the agent does the same kind of thing twice in a row (two web searches, two file writes...), the pet keeps doing it, however long the agent thinks in between, until something different happens: another kind of tool call, an error, a question for you, or the end of the turn. A single action is held for 8 seconds of thinking, so it doesn't flicker back and forth.

Never the same twice

With pet-agents.variety set to random (the default), every state picks one of several animations each time it starts. The pick comes from the agent's transcript, so the same agent does the same animation in every VS Code window, whether it's the main pet in one and a mini pet in another. Set it to classic to always get the looks in the table above.

Don't like one? Open the ⚙️ button in the pet panel, expand Actions and untick it (or list it in pet-agents.disabledActions, e.g. running.zoomies). It never plays again; if you untick every variant of a state, that state uses its classic look.

Sub-agents become mini pets

Every sub-agent the agent starts appears as a mini version of your pet in its own colour, lined up along the bottom of the panel. Each one gets a name that fits its job (explorers become "Detective Noodle" or "Scout Waffles", planners become "Professor Pickles", reviewers become "Inspector..."), with its task shown underneath. Minis act out their own state, celebrate when they finish, then vanish in a puff.

A second Claude Code session in the same workspace (say, another chat in this window) that was busy in the last couple of minutes joins them as a mini named after the folder it was started in (pet-agents.backgroundPets).

The row belongs to this repo's agents. When none are running here, busy sessions from your other repos (other VS Code windows) fill it instead, labelled with their repo name, so you can keep an eye on them. They step aside the moment a helper starts in this repo and never take over this window's pet (pet-agents.otherRepoPets).

Machines for tests and jobs

Every test run, build and background shell command gets a machine next to your pet: a washing machine, oven, microwave, computer, engine or server rack, each with its own animation (spinning socks, a glowing oven window, scrolling test output, turning gears, blinking lights). When a job finishes its machine dings 🔔 and goes away. Hover a machine to see its command and how long it has been running (pet-agents.machines).

It has a life of its own

When the agent is quiet, your pet gets up to things: chasing a butterfly, bird watching, digging, dancing, daydreaming, reading, having a coffee, yoga, rolling around, running in circles, and playing with its toys. It strolls around the panel (pet-agents.wander) and runs back to its spot the moment the agent starts working. Its pupils follow your mouse.

Pet it. Click for hearts 💖, double-click for a spin-jump trick ⭐. Clicking a napping pet wakes it up. Mini pets like attention too.

Toys, furniture and the bag

Every few minutes your pet finds something new (pet-agents.toys), and every find goes into its 🎒 bag. These are the starter bag's usual odds; they shift all the time (see Bags):

A new find shows off on the floor for a minute (rarer ones glow and sparkle, and a banner announces them), then flies into the bag. When your pet fancies a play it pulls something out: it chases the yarn, hides in the box, lounges on the couch, rides the skateboard, jams on the guitar or admires the treasure, then puts it back.

Play with it. Every find is either a real toy or an object:

• Toys (🧶 yarn, 🦴 bone, 🧸 teddy, 🥏 frisbee, 🎈 balloon, 🛹 skateboard, 🪁 kite, 🏀 basketball, 🚀 rocket, 🛸 UFO, 🦄 unicorn): click one on the floor to flick it across the panel. Your pet chases it and plays with it.
• Objects (📦 box, 🪴 plant, 🪑 chair, 🛋️ couch, 🛏️ bed, 🎸 guitar, 🥁 drum, 🕹️ arcade stick, ⛺ tent, 🏰 castle, 👑 crown, 💎 diamond, 🌈 rainbow): click one and your pet comes over to use it: sits, naps, hides, jams or admires.

A napping pet wakes up to play. While the agent is working, toys still fly but your pet stays at work. Right-click a toy or object to put it back in the bag.

Click 🎒 to see the active bag: every slot, with ❔ for ones you haven't found yet. Click a toy to take it out, click again to put it away. Bags are shared by every VS Code window and survive reloads and reinstalls. As you level up, more themed bags open (see Bags).

The shop

The bag has three tabs: 🧸 Toys (your finds), ✨ Collection (what you've bought) and 🛒 Shop. In the shop you trade spare toys for new things. Only spares are traded in, so you always keep one of each toy you've found. Every bag has its own shop, paid for with that bag's spares; the starter bag's sells:

Bought animations join the random mix (and the ⚙️ action list, where locked ones show 🔒). In ✨ Collection you pick which food 🍖 Feed drops, and switch each bought animation on or off. Bought foods can also be picked under the care buttons.

Take care of it

Click 🐾 to open care mode. Three stats wear down slowly in real time, even while VS Code is closed: 🍖 fullness, 💖 happiness and 🫧 cleanliness. Care is hands-on: pick a tool and actually do it.

Close the panel, keep the tool. Pick a tool, then click 🐾 again to tuck the panel away and get the space back. The tool stays in your hand (the 🐾 button shows it, e.g. 🍖) until you press Esc, open the bag or settings, or the agent starts working.

Every bit of care ends with the happy wiggle and hearts you get for petting it, whether it was you or a visitor who looked after it.

Your pet has opinions: it won't eat when it's full, and is too hungry to play when starving. When a stat is low you'll see it: dirt smudges on its fur, and "hungry", "bored" or "needs a bath" under its name.

No treats on the clock. While the agent is working, or any of its helper pets are out, care is locked and clicking the pet just gets a 🛠️ "busy working" bubble. Care unlocks as soon as the task is done.

Visitors

A pet that needs looking after gets help. While any care stat is at 40 or below, someone looks in every 40 minutes, and every 30 once all three are at zero: a passer-by stops to feed it, or a rain shower gives it a bath, whichever helps, each topping up a third of that stat. Very rarely, a friend of its own kind drops in to play with a toy from its bag. Every friend is a new, randomly made-up pet of the same species, with its own colour, markings, accessory and name. Look after your pet yourself and the next visit is put off for an hour; keep every stat above 40 and nobody comes. Each visit happens once however many windows are open, and visitors are switched off with pet-agents.visitors or in ⚙️.

Quick settings and tooltips

The ⚙️ button switches things on and off without leaving the panel: random animations and hobbies, wandering, new toys, machines, pets for other sessions, state colours, and each individual action. Changes are saved to your VS Code settings. 🪵 Gather debug logs at the bottom writes a snapshot of the view and the extension to the Pet Agents log and opens it.

Hover any pet for details: what it is doing, which file, which project, its care stats and how many helpers and jobs are running. The session dots in the top-left corner show your other active agent sessions (bright green = active, dark green = idle, grey = cold). Drag your pet anywhere in the panel; the position is remembered.

A pet for the long haul

Leave it open for weeks and there is always something going on. Every part is optional: switch each one off with its setting or in the ⚙️ panel.

Holidays

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Valentine's Day and Easter, worked out from your local date: your pet dresses up, decorations go up either side of it with a garland above, and bats, leaves, snow, fireworks, hearts or blossom drift by. Every holiday has several outfits and sets of decorations, and each window picks its own when it opens: for Christmas your pet might be Santa, an elf, a reindeer or a snowman; for Halloween a witch, a ghost, a vampire or a pumpkin.

Every bag has its own toy for each holiday (a 🎃 jack-o-lantern in the starter bag, a 🦑 spooky squid in the ocean bag, a 🍪 gingerbread cookie in the kitchen bag...), found only from that bag while the holiday is on, and kept forever. They stay hidden until you find them. Your own accessory wins if it wants the same spot as the costume (pet-agents.holidays).

Levels, challenges and prompt records

The 🏆 button shows your level and this week's records:

• XP comes from finished prompts, passing test runs and builds, helpers that finish, records you set and looking after your pet. It is counted once per prompt or run however many VS Code windows are open, and nothing is lost when you are away: after a week off, your first three prompts earn double.
• Three challenges every Monday, the same in every window: pass 5 test runs, have 3 helpers finish, ship on 4 different days...
• Weekly prompt records, worked out from your Claude Code transcripts: 🪄 the tiniest prompt with the longest run, 📜 the longest prompt that finished fastest, ⚙️ the busiest prompt, 🎯 the one done in the fewest actions, 🐣 the most helpers and ⏱️ the marathon, plus an all-time hall of fame. The first time you open it, it reads back through this week's transcripts. The board shows numbers and the repo only; turn on pet-agents.recordsShowPrompts to see the start of each prompt as well. Nothing leaves your machine.

Bugs to squash

A failing test run lets a 🐛 bug into the panel and a failing build a 👾 gremlin; the next passing run of the same kind squashes them, for XP. Leave the agent waiting for your OK for a minute and a 🦠 slime creeps up until you answer (pet-agents.enemies).

Bags

Levels open new bags, 20 in all: one at each of levels 1 to 5, then one every 2 levels up to 35. Each is a themed pack: 🌻 Garden, 🌊 Ocean, 🍳 Kitchen, 🎵 Music, ⚽ Sports, 🪐 Space, 👻 Spooky, 💾 Retro tech, 🚜 Farm, 🏕️ Camping, 🎨 Art studio, 🔬 Science lab, ❄️ Winter, 🌴 Jungle, 🏰 Castle, 🤖 Robots, 🌵 Desert, ☁️ Sky and the 💎 Legendary vault, where legendary finds turn up far more often. Pick the active bag at the top of the 🎒 panel (locked ones show the level that opens them). New finds come from its catalogue of 12 or more toys, and its 🛒 shop sells its goodies for its own spares. Switching never loses anything, every window follows the switch, and holiday toys still turn up during their event whichever bag is active. With pet-agents.levels off, every bag is open.

Every bag after the first is a whole pack:

The odds keep changing. Higher bags lean rarer: rare and legendary finds are several times likelier in the late bags than in the starter bag. On top of that, rare and legendary odds rise and fall on a slow 90-minute wave, and every time the panel opens it rolls its own luck, so one window may be on a 🍀 lucky streak while another has a 🌧️ slow day. The 🧸 Toys tab shows the odds right now and whether they're rising 📈 or falling 📉.

Older bags keep growing. Every bag gains three bonus toys (uncommon, rare, then legendary) as you level up past it: 6, 12 and 18 levels after the bag opens. They don't show at all, not even as ❔, until they join.

A new challenge joins the weekly pool: 🧸 find 3 toys in a new bag.

Pet styles

Each bag gives your pet a themed look: a flower crown, a snorkel mask, a chef hat, rock-star shades, a space helmet, a knight helm and more, with two colour variants each in the bag's shop. Pick one (or none) in the bag's ✨ Collection tab, or with pet-agents.style. Your own accessory wins its spot, and a holiday costume shows over a style while the event is on.

The house

The 🏠 button takes your pet home. Starter furniture unlocks as you level up, from a bed at level 1 to a disco ball at 20, and each bag brings a house of its own (a greenhouse cottage, a beach hut, a bakery, a moon base, a haunted manor, a castle...) with its own window onto the season or the stars. Pick a house and a room in the strip at the bottom (◀ Bedroom ▶), click a piece to put it in or take it out, drag it to move it, and pick each room's theme. Furniture from any bag can go in any room.

Rooms have a job: in a bedroom your pet naps in its bed, in a kitchen it waits by its bowl, in a yard it plays with its toys, and anywhere else it wanders about. The rooms are the same in every window, and an agent starting work calls your pet back to its desk (pet-agents.house).

Finishing, saves and old pets

• You finished! When the last bag opens at level 35, your pet throws a party and a finish screen sums up the save: days, level, XP, prompts, actions, toys, houses, rooms and records. It shows once, then from the 🏁 button in the level panel. XP keeps counting after.
• Share it. Copy a summary, save a 1200x630 share card, or open a pre-filled post on X or Bluesky (only when you click, and pet-agents.shareButtons hides those buttons). Only numbers, your pet's name and look and the bags are shared: never prompt text, file names or repo names. Pet Agents: Share Progress does the same any time.
• Pick your pet. A new pet starts at level 1 with 0 XP on a welcome screen: choose the species, name, colours, pattern and accessory (or 🎲 Surprise me), with ⚙️ More options... for everything else, or Skip. A six-stop tutorial of the corner buttons follows (Skip tutorial any time; ⚙️ 🎓 Replay the tour brings it back). Only prompts from after the pet arrives earn XP.
• 🔄 Start over... from the Profiles row in the 🏠 strip if the start went wrong: back to level 1 and the welcome screen, keeping the old save as a profile or leaving it out.
• Start a new save from the finish screen, ⚙️ 💾 Saves and sharing, or Pet Agents: Start a New Save. Everything that belongs to the save (level, bags, purchases, houses, care) is written to a profile file and a fresh save starts at level 1. Your prompt records, settings and holiday toys carry over, and every finished save adds a 🏅 to the level panel.
• Complete the collection. The 👤 Profiles tab in the 🏠 strip has progress bars for your bag items, shop food, shop animations, room stuff (furniture, themes and rooms) and pet styles, counting every bag you've opened. Find every regular toy and the save is ✅ complete; holiday toys never count, so nobody waits for a holiday. Buy everything in every shop too and it earns 💯. The badge shows on the finish card, in your share text and next to the save in the Profiles row.
• Visit your old pets from the Profiles row in the 🏠 strip. Each earlier pet is alive in its own houses, with its own toys, hobbies and style: pet it, look round, or 🎈 invite it over to play at your house as a mini pet. Visits are read-only: nothing moves, no XP, no finds, and its care stats stay as they were. 🏠 (or an agent starting work) brings you home. Profiles can be renamed and hidden.
• Swap profiles with friends. 📤 Share this profile... (or Pet Agents: Export Profile) writes a .petprofile.json with no prompts, paths or repo names. A friend adds it with ➕ Add a friend's profile... (or Pet Agents: Import Profile) and it appears under 👋 Friends. Send a newer copy and it replaces the old one.
• Move your pet to another computer. 🚚 Move my pet to another computer... (or Pet Agents: Move Pet to Another Computer) writes a .petsave file with your live save, your prompt records and, if you like, your old profiles and friends. Give it a password and the file is encrypted (scrypt and AES-256-GCM); without one, prompt previews stay behind. There is no password reset. Once the file is written and checked, the pet here becomes a "moved" profile you can still visit. On the other computer, 📦 Bring my pet here... (or Pet Agents: Bring Pet from Another Computer) brings it in, look and all, and asks before replacing a save that has progress.

Nothing is uploaded: you carry the files however you like.

Where the activity comes from

The pet reads two sources. Both are read-only: the extension never writes to them and makes no network requests.

1. Claude Code session logs (~/.claude/projects/). These give the detailed states above, plus sub-agent names and tasks. Nothing to install. Each window stays in its own lane: the pet only acts out Claude sessions started in a folder open in that VS Code window. A session from another repo never drives this pet; it can only appear as a labelled mini while no agents are running in this repo.
2. peon-ping (~/.claude/hooks/peon-ping/.state.json), if you have it installed. This covers other agents (Cursor, Codex, OpenCode, Kiro) with coarser states: waking, thinking, waiting, error and done. Events are filtered by workspace in the same way. To set it up, open ⚙️ > 🔔 Other agents (peon-ping): it says whether peon-ping is installed and walks you through it step by step for your OS, with 📋 copy buttons. The installer is saved to a file first so you can read it before running it; Pet Agents never downloads or runs anything itself.

Privacy

Pet Agents is offline. It has no runtime dependencies, imports no network module, and its webview may not connect anywhere (default-src 'none'). It writes only to its own storage and to files you pick in a save dialog, and its log holds counts and states, never prompt text. The one way out is the share buttons, which open your browser at a pre-filled post when you click them (pet-agents.shareButtons). A test (offline.test.ts) fails the build if any of that changes.

peon-ping is a separate project with its own network use. From reading its source: installing downloads its scripts and sound packs from GitHub; once a day, when a session starts, it asks GitHub for its latest version number; phone notifications (ntfy, Pushover, Telegram) are off unless you set them up, and carry the project name and status; over SSH or in a dev container it talks to its own audio relay on localhost. No telemetry and no transcript uploads.

Tests, builds and background jobs are recognised from the shell command (npm test, pytest, flutter test, npm run build, npm run dev...). A background job's machine stays until Claude Code logs its completion notification.

Limitation: Claude Code doesn't log when it is showing you a permission prompt. If a file edit (or another non-shell tool call) has no result after 5 seconds, the pet assumes it is waiting for your OK. Long-running shell commands, web fetches and sub-agents are excluded from that guess.

Commands

If the panel ever says "Pet Agents was updated", the extension was updated but the window is still running the old version: run Developer: Reload Window.

If the pet ever vanishes, click 🪵 Gather debug logs in ⚙️ (or run Pet Agents: Show Log). The view logs any frame that fails to draw, a lost canvas, and a pet that lost its position. It heals itself (rebuilds its sprites, resizes and moves the pet home) straight away and every 5 minutes. If frames keep failing for 10 seconds it refreshes itself, at most once every 5 minutes. Set the channel's log level to Debug (gear icon in the Output panel) to also see each 5-minute check and the view being shown and hidden.

Settings

All settings apply instantly, no reload needed. Every colour setting takes any CSS colour.

Your settings live in your VS Code user settings. The toy bags, shop purchases, houses and care stats are kept in VS Code's extension storage, and earlier saves as profile files in its storage folder.

Development

git clone https://github.com/Bheck890/vscode-pet-agent
cd vscode-pet-agent
npm ci
npm run install:vscode   # build, package a .vsix and install it into VS Code

Then run Developer: Reload Window. Or press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.

npm run compile   # dev build
npm run watch     # rebuild on change
npm run lint
npm test          # lint, compile, then the Jest suite
npm run media     # re-record the README GIFs, screenshots and the icon (needs Chrome or Edge)
npm run package   # production build + marketplace/<version>-<date>/pet-agents-<version>.vsix

npm run media drives the real webview in headless Chrome with a fake clock, so every frame is exact and every run produces the same pictures. Pass a clip name to record just one, e.g. npm run media -- care. Set CHROME_PATH if Chrome isn't found.

Editing the art

Pets are 32x32 grids in media/pets.js. Only the left 16 columns are drawn; the right half is mirrored automatically. Each letter is a palette key (o outline, b body, l light, d dark, p pink, k black, w white, y beak/feet), and body colours are derived from the pet's colour setting. Eyes, mouths, tails, wings, ear twitches, patterns, accessories and props are separate layers, so expressions and animations combine freely.

To add an accessory, add an entry to ACCESSORIES in media/pets.js (a grid using a for its colour and A for its darker edge, plus an anchor such as sp.headTop or sp.neckY), then add its name to ACCESSORIES in src/pet-config.ts and the pet-agents.accessory enum in package.json. Tests check that the lists match.

Artwork

All pet artwork is original pixel art defined as text grids in media/pets.js. The icon and the pictures in this README are rendered from that same art by scripts/record-media.js.

Acknowledgements

• vscode-peon-pet by smcqueen2: the original extension this one grew out of, including the webview, session tracking and peon-ping integration.
• peon-ping and peon-pet by Gary Sheng: the agent event system and the original desktop pet that inspired the session dots.
• vscode-pokemon by jakobhoeg: inspiration for the sidebar webview pet.

License

MIT