v0.5.2 — Server-rendered art frames

What's New

Refactor

• Pre-rendered art frames — the statusline bash script no longer maintains ~170 lines of inline species art. Instead, the MCP server pre-bakes idle/blink frames (with hat overlay) into status.json, and bash becomes a lightweight cycler. This is the foundation for upcoming emotion animations. (#91, @sanhuaaan)

New files

• scripts/snapshot-statusline.sh — visual review tool for frame output
• docs/emotion-animations-plan.md — implementation plan for emotion-based buddy animations (steps 2–6 pending)

Testing

• 220 tests passing (up from 213)
• New getStatusFrames + STATUS_FRAME_SEQUENCE tests covering all 19 species

Contributors

Thanks to @sanhuaaan for this architectural improvement — four PRs merged in this release cycle (#88, #90, #81, #91), all building toward a cleaner, more testable statusline.

Full Changelog

v0.5.1...v0.5.2

v0.5.1 — Combined status line integration

What's New

Features

• Combined status line mode — /buddy statusline combined overlays 5h/7d rate-limit usage bars (colored progress bars with reset timers) alongside your buddy art. Requires python3. Switch back with /buddy statusline basic. (#98)

Docs

• Added /buddy width, /buddy margin, /buddy statusline combined|basic to the README Commands Reference (#99)

Full Changelog

v0.5.0...v0.5.1

v0.5.0 — Wyvern, rainbow shinies & 92 achievements

What's New

Features

• Wyvern species — new 6-line companion with fire-breathing animation, horn-hat integration, and 3 idle frames. (#87, @jpmalone0)
• Rainbow gradient for shiny buddies — shiny companions cycle through a configurable rainbow gradient. Custom colors via rainbowColors in config. (#92, @jpmalone0)
• Configurable bubble width & margin — /buddy width 10-60 and /buddy margin 0-20 let you tune the statusline layout. (#92)
• Rate-limit stats overlay — new combined-status.sh shows 5h/7d usage bars alongside your buddy. (#92)
• Achievement expansion (16 → 92 badges) — compound achievements, secret badges, progress tracking for all 92 entries. Viewport-windowed TUI. (#68, @ndcorder)

Docs

• README: species count updated (18 → 19), roadmap item checked
• CONTRIBUTING.md: new PR checklist item (update Commands Reference for new commands), note about golden snapshot tests for new species

Full Changelog

v0.4.0...v0.5.0

v0.4.0 — Emoji-aware rendering + pick improvements

What's New

Bug Fixes

• Emoji display width — bubble text and companion card now correctly account for emoji terminal width (2-col emojis, VS16 upgrades, Emoji_Presentation property). Bash + TS renderers share a single source of truth via scripts/gen-emoji-widths.ts. (#88)
• Art alignment — capybara and chonk statusline art rows are now properly centered under the eyes row. (#90)
• Bubble border cutoff — speech bubbles no longer lose their bottom border when text is longer than the buddy art. (#81)
• Windows compatibility — jq path fallback for Chocolatey, PowerShell terminal width detection, Braille Blank double-width workaround. (#80)
• MCP diagnostics — the /buddy skill now surfaces a helpful diagnostic (bun check, launcher path) when the MCP server fails to start, instead of silently failing. (#77)

Features

• Pick improvements — expanded search criteria (eyes, hats, min stat thresholds, min average), async search with cancel-on-any-key, and dynamically generated personality text for companions. (#85)

Testing

• 137 tests passing, full install→uninstall→re-install cycle verified.

Full Changelog

v0.3.0...v0.4.0

v0.3.0 - Multi-buddy menagerie

v0.3.0 — Multi-buddy menagerie

Your buddy collection grows. Save, switch, and manage multiple companions without losing any.

New: Menagerie system

Contributed by @doctor-ew — the first feature PR for claude-buddy.

• Named slots — each companion lives in a named slot in ~/.claude-buddy/menagerie.json. Saving always appends, never overwrites.
• Interactive TUI picker — bun run pick opens a two-pane terminal UI: browse saved buddies on the left, preview on the right. Search by species, rarity, shiny, and stats.
• New /buddy commands:
  • /buddy summon [slot] — switch to a saved buddy (omit for random)
  • /buddy save [slot] — save current buddy to a named slot
  • /buddy list — show all saved buddies
  • /buddy dismiss <slot> — remove a saved buddy (can't dismiss the active one)
  • /buddy pick — launch interactive TUI picker
• Atomic storage — all manifest writes use tmp + rename for corruption safety
• Auto-migration — existing companion.json is automatically migrated to the menagerie on first load

New: Species-aware reactions

~150 unique reactions across 10 species (dragon, owl, cat, duck, robot, capybara, ghost, axolotl, blob + fallback). Each species reacts differently to errors, test failures, success, and name mentions.

New: Success detection

The PostToolUse hook now detects positive events too — "tests passed", "Build succeeded", "Done". Your buddy celebrates, not just commiserates.

New: Name-react hook

Say your buddy's name in a message and they react instantly in the status line — before Claude even starts responding. Species-specific reactions ("swivels head 180°" for owls, "ear flicks" for cats).

Improvements

• Dynamic card width — companion card now accepts a width parameter, fits any pane size
• Display-width-aware padding — emoji (✨ = 2 cols) and ANSI codes handled correctly. All card lines render at exactly W columns.
• Help pages updated — all menagerie commands in CLI help, MCP help, and /buddy help
• Keyboard help in footer — pick TUI help text moved to footer bar

Upgrade

cd claude-buddy
git pull
bun install
bun run backup
bun run install-buddy

Restart Claude Code after installing.

Contributors

• @doctor-ew — menagerie system, TUI picker, species-aware reactions, name detection (#4)
• @gzenz — tmux popup overlay, session isolation (#6)
• @birkdev — PostToolUse hook field fix (#13)

Thank you all for making everyone's buddy better.

v0.2.0 - tmux popup mode + community contributions

v0.2.0 — tmux popup mode + community contributions

Two community PRs shipped in this release. The buddy is getting better thanks to contributors.

New: tmux popup overlay mode

When running inside tmux (>= 3.2), your buddy now appears as a floating popup in the bottom-right corner instead of the status line. Includes:

• Animated ASCII art with speech bubbles
• ESC passthrough (closes popup momentarily, forwards ESC to Claude Code, reopens)
• Dynamic resizing when reactions appear/disappear
• F12 scroll mode (hides popup, activates tmux copy-mode)
• Configurable appearance via /buddy style, /buddy position, /buddy rarity
• Session isolation — multiple Claude Code sessions in parallel, each with their own buddy

Non-tmux users see zero changes — the installer auto-detects your environment and chooses the right mode.

Note: Switching between tmux and non-tmux mode requires re-running bun run install-buddy.

Fixed: PostToolUse hook was non-functional since v0.1.0

The hook that detects errors and test failures in Bash output was reading the wrong field name (.tool_result instead of .tool_response). It silently exited on every invocation. Fixed by @birkdev — your buddy now reacts to errors immediately, not just at end-of-response.

Improvements

• macOS compatibility — grep -P replaced with sed in hooks (grep -P doesn't exist on macOS)
• Safe JSON output — hooks use jq -n instead of heredoc strings (prevents broken JSON from special characters in reactions)
• Reaction TTL — speech bubble auto-expires after 20 seconds instead of staying forever
• Configurable comment cooldown — /buddy frequency [seconds] to control how often the buddy comments
• Session isolation — parallel Claude Code sessions no longer overwrite each other's reactions

Upgrade

cd claude-buddy
git pull
bun install

# Optional: backup before re-installing
bun run backup

bun run install-buddy

Restart Claude Code after installing.

Contributors

• @gzenz — tmux popup overlay, session isolation, configurable appearance (#6)
• @birkdev — PostToolUse hook bugfix (#13)

Thank you both for making everyone's buddy better.

v0.1.0 - Bring back your buddy

Bring back your Claude Code buddy — permanently

Anthropic removed /buddy in Claude Code v2.1.97. This is the open-source replacement that survives any update.

Features

• All 18 species with animated ASCII art (3 frames + blink)
• Rarity colors matching Claude Code's dark theme exactly
• Speech bubbles with contextual buddy comments after every response
• /buddy command (show, pet, stats, off, on, rename, personality)
• Brute-force buddy hunt — find your dream species/rarity/stats
• One-command install — bun run install-buddy
• Diagnostic tools — bun run doctor, bun run test-statusline, bun run backup
• Independent of Claude Code's binary — works with any version, past or future

Status

This is an MVP (v0.1.0). Fully functional on Linux. May have terminal-specific quirks on macOS or other platforms — please run bun run doctor and open an issue if you hit problems.

Install

git clone https://github.com/1270011/claude-buddy
cd claude-buddy
bun install

# Optional but recommended: snapshot your current Claude Code config
bun run backup

bun run install-buddy

Restart Claude Code, then type /buddy.

Recovery

Anything goes wrong? Two safety nets:

bun run backup restore   # restore latest snapshot
bun run cli/uninstall.ts # full clean removal