Code Buddy — Developer Companion

Code Buddy is a small, local-first companion living in your IDE. It reacts to meaningful development work, joins focused sessions, earns coins, changes appearance, and explains its growth without turning your editor into a task-management dashboard.

The extension has no account, telemetry, backend, organization sync, or paid items. AI conversation is optional and uses only the provider and model you explicitly choose.

Start in under a minute

1. Install Code Buddy and select its Activity Bar icon.
2. Follow the short guide inside the pet room. It explains growth, observed activity, and privacy.
3. Work normally. Saves, fixed diagnostics, successful VS Code tasks, Git commits, and completed focus sessions move the pet forward.
4. Open Journey to see why the pet grew, which badges were earned, and what remains local.
5. Spend earned coins from coins / closet to preview and equip cosmetic changes.

Buddy also has a small set of rare, temporary reactions to unusual development moments. They grant no XP or coins and do not create a separate checklist to farm.

Existing 1.x pet progress is migrated automatically when 2.0.0 starts.

The v2 loop

Daily goals that change

Each local day gets three deterministic goals. Save and focus variants rotate, while the third goal adapts to available Git, task, or diagnostics capabilities and falls back to general momentum when needed.

Reloading the editor cannot reroll a day. Once progress starts, that goal set stays stable. Rewards grant XP and coins but do not inflate Developer Score.

Focus with a light intention

Starting focus can include one optional line such as “finish the parser tests,” or it can begin immediately. The active intention stays beside the pet. At the end, choose Completed or Continue later.

This is deliberately not a task manager. Code Buddy retains at most eight local focus outcomes for the pet’s small memory.

Earned growth and the Buddy Closet

Meaningful work changes the pet in two separate ways:

• Development is earned. Aggregate focus, craft, delivery, and rhythm signals determine the pet’s Sprout, Buddy, or Companion stage and its subtle work-style trait.
• Cosmetics are chosen. Coins unlock flat-color palettes, faces, antennae, rugs, plant pots, and desk screens. Prices are validated by the extension, not the webview, and every current item is earnable locally.

Closet previews are visible in the room before coins are spent.

Language and effort badges

Effort badges recognize focus, code quality, shipped work, and weekly rhythm. Language badges use the active VS Code language at meaningful activity time. Saves contribute only a small bounded amount; a language badge also requires non-save activity.

One earned badge can be shown beside the pet. The complete collection stays in Journey.

Small, explicit local memory

Code Buddy remembers only what supports the pet loop:

• Feed and play counts
• Days with a completed daily goal
• Up to eight focus intentions and their explicit outcomes
• Bounded aggregate language and effort progress

It does not infer personal facts from chat, and it does not store code, filenames, terminal output, repository paths, or command history.

Talk to Buddy, optionally

Open Talk to Buddy beneath Feed, Play, and Focus. The conversation stays Buddy-first; provider and model names live inside the collapsed AI connection settings. Open those settings, choose a provider, load its available models, then select the model yourself. Code Buddy never silently picks one.

Provider catalogs are narrowed to compatible conversation models before they reach the picker. If a request fails, Code Buddy explains the provider error and restores the message for an intentional retry.

Supported connections:

• Google Gemini with your Google AI Studio key
• OpenAI with your OpenAI API key
• Anthropic with your Anthropic API key
• VS Code Language Models already available in the editor

Gemini, OpenAI, and Anthropic keys are stored separately in VS Code Secret Storage. VS Code Language Models use the editor’s own access and consent flow.

For a reply, the selected provider receives only:

• Your message and a bounded recent Code Buddy conversation
• Pet name, mood, care levels, level, active language, and weekly score
• Up to three daily-goal summaries
• The active focus intention, if one exists
• The bounded pet development and focus-memory summary described above

Source code, selections, filenames, terminal output, workspace paths, and repository contents are never attached. OpenAI requests set store: false.

The usage panel counts only requests sent through Code Buddy. It does not claim to show account-wide Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, or Copilot usage. Conversation history and counters remain in the current VS Code profile and can be cleared together.

Meaningful signals and rewards

Repeated signals have daily reward caps. Lifetime totals remain accurate after a cap is reached.

Commands and settings

Settings:

• codeBuddy.focusDurationMinutes: 5–120 minutes, default 25
• codeBuddy.notifications.enabled: achievement, focus, goal, care, and badge notifications

Privacy and storage

Pet state, inventory, onboarding, badge progress, bounded pet memory, AI conversation, provider/model choices, and request-local usage counters are stored through the current VS Code profile. BYOK secrets use VS Code Secret Storage instead of settings or pet state.

Reset and provider-disconnect actions require confirmation where data or credentials would be removed. Code Buddy currently provides no cloud recovery or cross-device sync.

Development and verification

npm install
npm run check
npm run lint
npm test
npm run compile
npm run preview
npm run package

The game, quest, cosmetic, badge, and progression rules are independent from the VS Code API and tested as pure domain logic. Design-contract tests reject emoji in product-facing source and reject CSS gradient paint functions.

See CHANGELOG.md in the extension package for release details.

Support

Use the Code Buddy Marketplace Q&A for bug reports, setup questions, and privacy questions. Never post an API key, token, source code, or private repository detail in a public report.

License

MIT