Claude Code Crabgotchi
A cute ASCII crab companion that lives in your VS Code sidebar and reacts to your Claude Code sessions.
████████
█▌▐██▌▐█
████████████
████████
▐▐ ▌▌
Features
Reactive Emotions
Your crab watches Claude Code activity and reacts in real-time:
| Emotion |
Trigger |
| Neutral |
Default idle state |
| Happy |
Successful operations, file saves |
| Excited |
Multiple successes, tests passing |
| Curious |
Plan/Explore agents investigating |
| Thinking |
Reading files, running commands, web searches |
| Sad |
Errors, test failures |
| Angry |
Repeated errors |
| Tired |
Long sessions, low energy, inactivity |
| Hungry |
Low food stat |
| Surprised |
Git commits, unexpected results |
Tamagotchi Stats
Your crab has four stats that change over time:
- Food - Decreases over time, feed your crab to keep it happy
- Happiness - Affected by successes (up) and errors (down), capped by hygiene and energy
- Energy - Depletes during Claude activity, recovers during inactivity
- Hygiene - Decreases when crab poops (from overfeeding), clean up to restore
If stats get too low, your crab will let you know!
Wellbeing Tracking
- Sparklines - ASCII graphs showing 24-hour and 7-day wellbeing trends
- Crab Age - Track how long your crab has been with you (days/weeks/months/years)
- Wellbeing Score - Hover over sparklines to see current wellbeing percentage
- Feed - Give your crab a snack
- Pet - Show some love
Break Timer
Built-in Pomodoro-style break timer:
- Configurable duration (1-120 minutes)
- Visual countdown in the stats area
- Notification when timer completes
- Snooze option for 5 more minutes
Customization
- Crab Color - Choose from 7 colors (Amber, Green, Blue, Purple, Red, Cyan, White)
- Bubble Color - Customize the speech bubble color
Night Mode
Automatic night mode between 11 PM - 5 AM with stars and moon.
Installation
From VS Code Marketplace
- Open VS Code
- Go to Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X)
- Search for "Claude Code Crabgotchi"
- Click Install
From Source
git clone https://github.com/panuhen/claude-code-crabgotchi.git
cd claude-code-crabgotchi
npm install
npm run compile
Then press F5 in VS Code to launch the Extension Development Host.
How It Works
The extension monitors Claude Code's log files in ~/.claude/projects/ and uses pattern matching to detect:
- Tool calls (Read, Write, Edit, Bash, etc.)
- Success/error messages
- Agent types (Plan, Explore)
- Special keywords and patterns
The crab's emotion updates in real-time as Claude works, giving you a fun visual indicator of your coding session's progress.
Settings
Access settings via the gear icon in the Crabgotchi panel:
| Setting |
Description |
Default |
crabgotchi.crabColor |
Crab color |
Amber (#e5c07b) |
crabgotchi.bubbleColor |
Speech bubble color |
Amber (#e5c07b) |
crabgotchi.breakTimer.enabled |
Enable break timer |
false |
crabgotchi.breakTimer.minutes |
Timer duration in minutes |
25 |
crabgotchi.showStats |
Show wellbeing sparklines |
true |
Requirements
- VS Code 1.85.0 or higher
- Claude Code CLI (for reactive features)
The extension is designed to be lightweight:
- Load time: ~3ms
- Activation: ~9ms
- Polling interval: 1 second (only checks file sizes)
- Incremental reads: Only reads new content, not full files
License
MIT
Made with Claude Code for Claude Code 🧡
