CodeChan

Turn anyone into your coding buddy.

Got a favourite anime character, friend, or meme? Bring them into VS Code with custom animations and personality.

Or just pick one of the ready-made buddies and start in seconds.

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Your Coding Buddy, Your Way

CodeChan lives in your VS Code sidebar and panel. It watches what you're doing and reacts — saves, errors, long sessions, late nights, idle streaks. Every buddy has a personality: some are optimistic and hype you up, others are sarcastic and ruthless.

The difference from other companions: you bring the character. Any pixel art character can become your buddy. All you need is a few PNGs and a JSON file.

Ready-Made Buddies

Five characters included, no setup needed:

Switch between them instantly from the panel title bar.

Bring Your Own Character

This is the main feature. Drop any character into CodeChan using a simple folder structure:

~/.vscode/code-chan/characters/
  my-buddy/
    character.json
    idle.png
    happy.png
    sad.png
    excited.png
    thinking.png
    talking.png

A minimal character.json:

{
  "id": "my-buddy",
  "name": "My Buddy",
  "author": "you",
  "description": "My custom coding companion",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "emotions": ["idle", "happy", "sad", "excited", "thinking", "talking"],
  "animations": {
    "idle":     { "fps": 4, "frames": ["idle","idle","idle","thinking","idle"] },
    "excited":  { "fps": 8, "frames": ["excited","happy","excited","excited"] },
    "sad":      { "fps": 4, "frames": ["sad","sad","idle","sad","sad"] },
    "thinking": { "fps": 2, "frames": ["thinking","thinking","thinking"] },
    "talking":  { "fps": 8, "frames": ["idle","talking","idle","talking"] },
    "happy":    { "fps": 6, "frames": ["happy","excited","happy","idle"] }
  },
  "messages": {
    "save":           ["Your message when file is saved"],
    "errorsAppeared": ["Your message when errors appear"],
    "errorsFixed":    ["Your message when errors are fixed"],
    "lateNight":      ["Your late night message"]
  }
}

Reload VS Code — your character shows up in the picker under Community Packs.

Full guide: CHARACTER_PACK_GUIDE.md

What It Reacts To

Features

• Bring your own character — any PNG images + character.json
• Custom messages — give each character their own voice per trigger
• Custom animations — define fps and frame sequences in JSON
• 5 built-in characters — ready to use out of the box
• Preview command — see all animations live before switching
• Sidebar + bottom panel — always visible wherever you work
• Adjustable message frequency — low / medium / high

Commands

• Code-Chan: Show Message — manually trigger a message
• Select Character — switch characters or open your characters folder
• Code-Chan: Preview Character Pack — preview a community pack's animations

Settings

• code-chan.character — active character id
• code-chan.messageFrequency — low / medium / high

Privacy

CodeChan runs entirely locally. It never sends your code or activity anywhere.

Release Notes

0.1.1

• Community character pack system — bring any character via character.json
• Preview panel for community packs
• Auto-creates characters folder on first launch
• Added Kaen, Ren, Yuki anime companions

0.1.0

• Initial release — Clippy and Cool Cat, event-driven messages, sidebar + panel

Feedback & Characters

Built a cool character pack? Found a bug? Open an issue at github.com/syed-emad/codechan.