I gave my AI coding assistant a body — and now it lives in my terminal

hiehoo — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 09:55:22 +0000

The problem with invisible AI

I code with Claude every day. It's genuinely helpful. But the interaction is... clinical. Text in, text out. No personality. No sense that something is there with me.

I kept thinking: what if your AI assistant had a presence? Not a chatbot avatar. Something that reacts to what you're doing. Gets happy when tests pass. Gets tired when you've been coding for 6 hours straight. Has idle thoughts while you're reading docs.

So I built it.

Meet Oh My Kira

Oh My Kira is a terminal renderer that displays an animated companion next to your code. It hooks into Claude code's state file and reacts in real time.

Your buddy has:

Animated sprites — different animations for idle, working, happy, tired, error states
Live stat bars — hunger, happiness, energy, hygiene (yes, really)
XP and evolution — your buddy levels up as you code
Speech bubbles — random thoughts, reactions to your session
Streak tracking — consecutive coding days

It's a Tamagotchi that lives in your terminal and watches you code.

How it works

The renderer watches a JSON state file that gets updated by the Claude Buddy plugin during coding sessions. When the state changes, the renderer:

Resolves which visual state to display (idle? working? error? happy?)
Loads the right spritesheet and slices it into frames
Renders the animation using the Kitty graphics protocol (escape sequences that display images inline in your terminal)
Draws stat bars, XP progress, and speech bubbles around the sprite
Adapts the layout to your terminal size — works in a narrow side pane or a full window

Everything runs in a single terminal pane. No browser. No Electron. Just escape sequences.

+------------------------------------------+
|        "hmm, interesting approach..."     |
|                                           |
|            [animated sprite]              |
|                                           |
+== My Agent ===============================+
| egg -> baby                               |
| XP ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 25               |
|                                           |
| Hunger  ████████████████████              |
| Happy   ███████████████████░              |
| Energy  ███████████████████░              |
| Hygiene ███████████████████░              |
|                                           |
| 🔥 8-day streak                           |
+------------------------------------------+

The tech

Built with Node.js and zero frontend frameworks:

sharp — spritesheet slicing and background removal
chokidar — file watching for state changes
Kitty graphics protocol — renders images directly in the terminal via escape sequences

The whole thing is ~8 files in lib/. No build step. No bundler.

It works on any terminal that supports the Kitty graphics protocol — Ghostty and Kitty are the two main ones.

Art packs

The companion's look is fully customizable through art packs — directories of spritesheets with a config file that maps states to animations.

Two packs are bundled:

Kira — anime-style companion
WPenguin — pixel art penguin

Creating your own is straightforward. Drop spritesheets into a folder, write a pack.json that maps states to sheets:
Click to see the full pack.json structure

{
  "name": "My Pack",
  "format": "spritesheet-grid",
  "frame_size": { "width": 768, "height": 448 },
  "grid_cols": 4,
  "state_map": {
    "idle":    { "sheet": "idle.png",   "frames": 10, "interval_ms": 100 },
    "working": { "sheet": "typing.png", "frames": 8,  "interval_ms": 120 }
  }
}

If you've ever made pixel art or have sprite assets lying around — they work here.

Try it

git clone https://github.com/lukebaze/oh-my-kira.git
cd oh-my-kira
npm install
npm link
oh-my-kira --watch ~/.claude/buddy/state.json

Or if you have Claude Buddy installed, just run /buddies launch and it splits your Ghostty terminal automatically.

What's next

This is early. Things I'm thinking about:

More art packs (contributions welcome)
Sound effects (yes, really)
Multi-buddy support
A web-based art pack editor

If you think coding should have a little more personality — give it a star, try it out, or make your own art pack.

lukebaze / oh-my-kira

Terminal renderer for Claude Buddy — displays your coding companion via Kitty graphics protocol

Oh My Kira

Your coding companion, alive in the terminal.

A real-time animated sprite renderer for Claude Buddy that brings your AI coding companion to life — right next to your code.

Kira reacts to your coding session in real time — mood, stats, speech bubbles, and all.

What is this?

Oh My Kira renders an animated companion in a terminal pane while you code with Claude. It watches the buddy state file and displays:

Animated sprites that react to mood and activity
Live stat bars — hunger, happiness, energy, hygiene
XP & evolution — level up your buddy over time
Speech bubbles — idle thoughts and reactions
Streak tracking — consecutive coding days

+------------------------------------------+
|        "hmm, interesting approach..."     |
|                                           |
|            [animated sprite]              |
|                                           |
+== My Linh ===============================+
| egg -> baby                               |
| XP ████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░ 25               |
|                                           |
| Hunger  ████████████████████              |
| Happy

…

View on GitHub

Forem: hiehoo