Customize your Claude Code companion pet. Pick your species, rarity, hat, eyes, and shiny status — then patch the binary to make it stick.
Claude Code has a hidden gacha companion system (the Buddy system) that assigns you a deterministic pet based on your account UUID. Your rarity, species, and stats are locked to your identity. This tool lets you override that and choose your own.
Design your companion visually with live ASCII preview:
- All 18 species with real sprite rendering
- 5 rarities, 6 eye styles, 8 hats, shiny toggle
- Generate a name and personality via AI prompt or write your own
- Exports config JSON with step-by-step install instructions
- Design your buddy at pickle-pixel.com/buddy and click Copy Config JSON
- Close all Claude Code sessions (the binary can't be patched while running)
- Download and run the patcher:
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Pickle-Pixel/claudecode-buddy-crack/main/buddy-crack.js
node buddy-crack.jsThat's it. The patcher reads the JSON from your clipboard, patches the binary, injects your companion, and creates a backup. One command.
Other ways to provide the JSON:
node buddy-crack.js # Auto-read from clipboard (recommended)
node buddy-crack.js companion.json # Read from a file- Restart Claude Code — your custom companion appears
node buddy-crack.js # Patch + inject (clipboard or interactive paste)
node buddy-crack.js companion.json # Patch + inject from file
node buddy-crack.js status # Show patch state + companion info
node buddy-crack.js unpatch # Restore original binary from backupThe Buddy system stores only the companion's name and personality in ~/.claude.json. The visual traits (rarity, species, eyes, hat, stats) are recomputed from your account hash on every read — editing the config alone does nothing because the recomputed values always overwrite stored ones.
The patcher flips a single spread operation in the compiled binary:
// Original — bones (recomputed) win:
return { ...stored, ...bones }
// Patched — stored (your config) wins:
return { ...bones, ...stored }
Same length, same structure, zero offset shift. Clean binary swap with automatic backup and integrity verification.
| Category | Options |
|---|---|
| Rarity | common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary |
| Species | duck, goose, blob, cat, dragon, octopus, owl, penguin, turtle, snail, ghost, axolotl, capybara, cactus, robot, rabbit, mushroom, chonk |
| Eyes | · ✦ × ◉ @ ° |
| Hats | none, crown, tophat, propeller, halo, wizard, beanie, tinyduck |
| Shiny | 1% chance normally — or just toggle it on |
| Stats | DEBUGGING, PATIENCE, CHAOS, WISDOM, SNARK (scaled by rarity) |
- Automatic backup — the original binary is backed up before any modification
- Config backup —
~/.claude.jsonis backed up before injection - Integrity check — binary size is verified after patching; mismatches trigger auto-restore
- Safe config injection — only the
companionfield is modified; all other config (OAuth, permissions, settings) is preserved even if the JSON has syntax issues - Fully local — no data is sent anywhere. The buddy system has no server-side state
- Fully reversible —
node buddy-crack.js unpatchrestores the original binary
| Platform | Binary Location | Clipboard | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | ~/.local/bin/claude.exe |
PowerShell (UTF-8) | Tested |
| macOS | ~/.local/bin/claude |
pbpaste | Untested |
| Linux | ~/.local/bin/claude |
xclip | Untested |
All platforms follow the XDG Base Directory specification. Version binaries are stored in ~/.local/share/claude/versions/.
The binary patch targets specific minified variable names in Claude Code v2.1.89. Different versions will have different minified names, which means the patch pattern won't match. The tool detects this and tells you — it won't modify a binary it doesn't recognize. When Claude Code updates, you'll need an updated patch pattern.
- Node.js 18+
- Claude Code installed (native installation)
- The
BUDDYfeature flag must be active (April 2026 teaser window onward)
See BUDDY_SYSTEM.md for the full reverse-engineering documentation of the gacha algorithm, PRNG implementation, hash functions, tamper protection, and attack surface analysis.