codotchi — VS Code extension
Grow and raise your personal virtual pet as a VS Code extension while you code.
Overview
codotchi is a VS Code extension that lets you raise a digital pet inspired
by the original Tamagotchi. Your pet
lives in a sidebar panel, reacts to your coding activity, and needs regular care
to survive and evolve into its final form. Any support and feedback is much appreciated
— see the Support section below!
Your pet is drawn from one of 7 sprite sets, with more to be added in the future,
assigned to you at random when you start a new game.
Preview
Integrations
Looking for the Claude Code or OpenCode terminal integrations?
Visit github.com/dylscoop/codotchi to download the plugins — your pet's state is shared across VS Code, PyCharm, and the terminal.
Features
- Sidebar pet panel — pixel art pet with animated sprites, stat bars, and
action buttons, all rendered in a dedicated sidebar webview
- Classic Tamagotchi mechanics — hunger, happiness, discipline, energy,
health, weight, and age stats, all decaying in real time
- Full care system — feed meals and snacks, play mini-games, put pet to
sleep, clean droppings, give medicine, scold and praise
- Life cycle & evolution — egg → baby → child → teen → adult → senior, with
the final character determined by how well you cared for your pet
- Moods you can see — a happy pet sparkles, a sad pet sheds a tear, a
sleeping pet dozes with drifting z's, and a pet stops to eat its meal from a bowl
- Pet customization — name your pet and choose a pet type on first launch
- Desktop alerts — when hunger, happiness or energy hits 0, or health drops
below 25, you get a desktop notification, even with VS Code minimised. It repeats every
15 minutes while the stat stays low; turn it off with
codotchi.osNotifications
- Calls tidy up after themselves — when your pet calls for attention, the
popup hides after 10 seconds, and the notification closes by itself once you
answer the call or it expires
- Sickness & death — neglect your pet and it gets sick; leave it untreated
and it dies. A sick pet won't eat, snack, play or take a break until it's
had its medicine — the Medicine button counts the doses left. A cat doesn't
die: it goes back to its original owners or off hunting, and moves on
- Safe while you are away — when you step away from the IDE your pet gets
hungry and bored more slowly and never loses health, so it is waiting for you
when you come back
- Seasons and time of day — your pet lives in a pixel-art scene that follows
the real month and clock: blossom trees and spring showers with a rainbow,
sunflowers and fireflies in summer, falling leaves and pumpkins in autumn (with
the odd thunderstorm, morning fog and geese flying south), and a
snowman, fairy lights and snowfall in winter. The sky moves from a warm sunrise through a
bright morning to sunset and starry night. Pick a fixed season or a plain
background with
codotchi.background, soften the scene so your pet stands out
with codotchi.backgroundOpacity, or keep it still with
codotchi.backgroundAnimations. Prefer the original look? Set
codotchi.backgroundStyle to Legacy
- Little whims — now and then your pet just wants to play a game, get a
pat, or have a meal or a snack, even when it isn't hungry or sad. Answer in
time and it's happy; ignore it and its health suffers
- Break reminders — after 30 minutes of coding, your pet reminds you to
take a break. Praise it to answer: it's happier for it and naps for 5
minutes while you rest (stats frozen except energy, which recharges, and it
keeps aging). You can't wake it early — it wakes up on its own.
Skipping it does no harm, but the reminder keeps coming back every few minutes until you actually take the break (idle time pauses the timer, it doesn't reset it)
- OpenCode integration — your pet lives in the terminal too, with shared
state across VS Code, PyCharm, and OpenCode
- Status bar integration — pet name and mood always visible in the VS Code
status bar, with a ⚠ while your pet wants something (hover to see what);
click to open the sidebar. Hide it with
codotchi.statusBarEnabled
- Persistent state — pet survives VS Code restarts; offline time is
accounted for with capped stat decay
- Configurable — customise font size, pet size, stage height, colours, idle thresholds,
attention call behaviour, and more via Settings → Extensions → codotchi.
Developer-mode settings live in their own Developer section
Installation
Install Codotchi from the VS Code Marketplace,
or search for Codotchi in the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X).
See the GitHub repository for manual
installation, pre-built releases, and the OpenCode integration download.
Using the extension
Once installed and VS Code has reloaded:
Click the icon in the activity bar (left sidebar) to open the Your
Pet panel. Alternatively, run Codotchi: Open Pet Panel from the command
palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P).
On first launch the New Codotchi setup screen appears:
- Enter a name (up to 16 characters).
- Choose a pet type — each has different stat decay rates.
- Click Hatch!
Your pet now lives in the sidebar. Care for it using the action buttons:
Feed, Snack, Play, Pat, Sleep, Clean, Medicine,
Praise, and Scold.
Your pet's state is saved automatically and restored the next time VS Code
opens. Stat decay while VS Code is closed is capped so a long break
won't instantly kill your pet.
Your pet's name and current mood are always visible in the status bar
at the bottom of VS Code.
Actions
| Action |
What it does |
| Feed |
Gives your pet a full meal. Restores a large chunk of hunger. Overfeeding has no effect. Not available while your pet is sick. |
| Snack |
Gives a small treat. Boosts happiness instead of hunger, but adds more weight. Eating too many snacks in a row will make your pet sick. Not available while your pet is sick. |
| Play |
Opens the mini-game picker. Choose Left / Right, Higher or Lower, Coin Flip or Boss Battle. Winning boosts happiness; losing applies a small penalty. Costs energy — your pet can't play if exhausted or sick. Also contains Today's Token Cost — see below. |
| Pat |
Gives your pet a gentle pat. A hand pats its head, hearts float up and each pet reacts in its own way. Boosts happiness. Costs energy. Accessed via the Play menu (same overlay as the mini-games). Cannot be used while your pet is sleeping or exhausted. |
| Sleep |
Puts your pet to sleep. Energy slowly regenerates while it sleeps and your pet cannot take any other actions. Wake it manually or wait for full energy. During a break nap the button shows the minutes left and your pet wakes on its own. |
| Clean |
Clears all droppings from the screen. Leaving too many uncleaned for too long will make your pet sick. |
| Medicine |
Treats sickness. Three doses cure it (the button shows how many are left); medicine does not restore health. Use it as soon as your pet falls ill, because sickness drains health until it is cured. |
| Praise |
Rewards good behaviour. Raises the discipline stat, which contributes to a better care score and a higher-tier evolution. |
| Scold |
Corrects bad behaviour. Also raises discipline. Use it when your pet misbehaves rather than at random, as it has no direct stat benefit beyond discipline. |
Tip: keep all four stat bars (Hunger, Happy, Energy, Health) out of the
red to maximise your care score, which determines which character your pet
evolves into at each life stage.
Today's Token Cost
The Play menu also includes a non-game option: Today's Token Cost.
Clicking it makes your pet pull out a phone, tablet or laptop and shows a
speech bubble with your combined AI usage for the day, drawn from Claude Code, OpenCode, and/or GitHub Copilot:
- Today — total cost (USD) across Claude Code/OpenCode since local midnight
- Last 1h — cost in the past hour (Claude Code only; OpenCode does not
persist per-hour data to disk)
- Avg — average tokens per message today
- Copilot — your GitHub Copilot premium-request quota, shown as a
percentage remaining (not a dollar figure). The first time you select
it you'll be prompted to sign in to GitHub via VS Code's built-in
authentication — no personal access token or admin access needed.
Which sources feed the bubble is configurable via
codotchi.tokenCostSources in Settings → Extensions → codotchi — pick
any combination (e.g. just Copilot, just Claude + OpenCode, or all three).
Costs energy and boosts happiness, same as a Pat.
Levels & Achievements (beta)
Off by default while in beta. Turn it on with the codotchi.enableLevels
setting. Your progress is tracked even while it's off, so turning it on later
shows everything you've earned.
Coding, committing, answering your pet's calls and winning mini-games all earn
XP. Feeding, playing, cleaning and the other care buttons only earn XP when
they answer a call from your pet. You have a trainer level that stays with
you when a pet dies, and each pet has its own pet level. Both show under
the pet with an XP bar.
| Source |
XP |
Cap per hour |
Cap per day |
| Answering a call |
10 |
- |
100 |
| Mini-game win |
10 |
20 |
50 |
| Code activity |
2 |
10 |
40 |
| Commit |
15 |
30 |
90 |
| Evolution |
30 |
- |
- |
| Achievement unlock |
50 |
- |
- |
Click the level line to open the achievements panel. Achievements are split
into two paths, 🧑💻 Coder and 🐾 Keeper, with trainer-level milestones
shared by both. Each one shows a progress bar and a "How:" line explaining what
counts towards it. A few (Detective, First
Blood, Exterminator) are greyed out as Coming soon.
Daily challenges
Each pet gets three challenges a day: one Coder, one Keeper and one wildcard.
They reset at local midnight. Each pays 25 XP, plus 25 more for finishing all
three. Finishing all three on consecutive weekdays builds a 🔥 streak; weekends
don't break it (or add to it), and the streak is lost when the pet dies.
Mini-games
Clicking Play opens the game picker (requires energy). Three games are
available:
| Game |
How to win |
| Left / Right |
The pet hides behind one of two doors. Pick the correct door each round to win. |
| Higher or Lower |
A number is shown. Guess whether the next number will be higher or lower. Get enough correct to win. |
| Coin Flip |
Call Heads or Tails, then watch the coin spin. A single flip decides the outcome. |
| Boss Battle |
Dev-mode preview: only shown with developer mode and the Boss Battle developer setting on; a second setting makes it always available for testing. A mind-game against a coding boss. A boss appears when your pet reaches level 3 (Syntax Wraith), 5 (NullPointer Demon), 10 (StackOverflow Behemoth) and every 5 levels after that; the button only shows while one is waiting, with the count. Losing keeps the boss for a retry. Each round you and the boss secretly pick a stance, then both are revealed: Attack beats Patch (a big hit), Patch beats Guard (a free heal), Guard beats Attack (block and reflect). Every boss has its own habits and changes them when enraged below 40% HP; watch its last 5 stances to learn them, because spamming one stance gets punished. Two wins in a row power up the next one. Each Patch heals less than the last, and from round 12 overtime damages both sides, so every fight ends. Your pet's level sets its strength; health, energy, discipline and happiness each add or remove up to 20%. A win gives 40 XP (capped at 40 an hour and 80 a day), counts as a mini-game win and unlocks Champion. |
Pet Types
| Type |
Tendency |
| Codeling |
Balanced across all stats |
| Bytebug |
High energy, hunger decays faster |
| Pixelpup |
High happiness, but happiness decays faster |
| Shellscript |
Slow evolver, high base health |
Each pet animal has its own sprite set
"Grow your best pet by writing your best code."
Support
GitHub: github.com/dylscoop/codotchi
Codotchi Sprites
Want to see a new sprite in the game? Send a drawn sprite or request one to be added — a passcode will be given every time one gets implemented.
Open a sprite request on GitHub Issues
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