Vibebud

English | 中文

A little AI buddy that stays with you while you vibe code.

Vibebud gives your coding agents a visible presence: a floating companion on your desktop, web app, or phone that can chat, show status, and tap you when something needs attention.

       your code editor                 Vibebud
  +------------------------+        +-------------+
  | issue, branch, tests   |  <-->  |  floating   |
  | AI agents doing work   |        |  buddy      |
  | commits, PRs, reviews  |        |  status     |
  +------------------------+        |  chat       |
                                    +-------------+

Instead of letting AI agent work disappear into terminals, logs, and background processes, Vibebud makes it feel present and easy to follow.

Screenshot coming soon. For now: imagine a small animated avatar in the corner of your screen, blinking at you, occasionally popping a chat bubble.

The Idea

Vibe coding is more fun when your tools feel alive.

Vibebud is a small companion layer for AI-assisted development. It is not trying to replace your editor, terminal, GitHub, or agent framework. It gives those workflows a friendlier face:

• See what your agents are doing at a glance
• Chat with a buddy without changing context
• Get quiet pings when a task finishes or needs input
• Assign lightweight todos to different buddy avatars
• Keep multiple agent personalities visible while you work

How It Feels

Agent starts a task      -> buddy appears active
Agent needs a decision   -> buddy sends a quiet ping
Agent finishes work      -> buddy shows a short status
You want to respond      -> open a small chat bubble
You need focus           -> dock or move the buddy away

The goal is simple: make AI collaborators easier to supervise without making your workspace heavier.

What You Can Build With It

Vibebud is meant for developers experimenting with AI coding agents, desktop companions, and more playful development workflows.

Surface	Status
Web preview (core/)	Working
Electron desktop - Windows	Working, NSIS installer builds end-to-end
Electron desktop - macOS / Linux	Planned, not yet wired up
Android (Capacitor 8)	Scaffolded overlay shell via OverlayService
iOS	Out of scope
Optional backend	Accounts, sync, backups, subscription state, and managed AI calls

Personalities and Groups

Each buddy has a name, a role, and its own system prompt. The six built-ins:

• Helper - general assistant
• Tactician - planner and prioritizer
• Researcher - digger for prior art and references
• Skeptic - critical reviewer who probes assumptions
• Cheerleader - upbeat encourager
• Empath - listens first, validates, then suggests

Drag two buddies near each other and they form a small team. A pastel hull appears behind them, and each member is told who its teammates are so it can defer to a better-suited specialist when appropriate.

Quick Start

# Install deps for both core and desktop
npm run install-all

# Web preview at http://localhost:3060
npm run web-dev

For the desktop app:

# Run Electron pointed at the web dev server
# Use this alongside npm run web-dev in another terminal
npm run desktop-dev

Optional backend:

# Runs at http://localhost:3070
npm run server-dev

Build commands:

# Build core, copy into desktop, launch Electron against the static export
npm run desktop-run

# Windows installer -> desktop/dist/vibebud-desktop-setup.exe
npm run desktop-build

# Android debug APK on a connected device/emulator
npm run android-dev

# Android release APK
npm run android-build

The dev server runs on port 3060, not 3000. The desktop window loads the /buddy route, which has a transparent background so only the avatar shows through.

Repo Layout

vibebud/
├── core/        # shared Next.js UI: web app and bundled desktop UI
├── desktop/     # Electron wrapper around core/
└── mobile/      # Capacitor wrapper around core/

Anything that can live in core/ should. The platform shells stay thin.

The optional backend lives at ../server/ from this package.

Stack

• core/ - Next.js 16 App Router, React 19, Tailwind v4, TypeScript 5, lottie-react. Configured for static export so the desktop shell can serve it from disk.
• desktop/ - Electron 33 and electron-builder. Transparent always-on-top window covering the full work area, with click-through enabled by default and toggled off per element while the cursor is over a buddy or chat bubble.
• mobile/ - Capacitor 8 plus a native overlay module that can run the buddy as a WindowManager overlay from a foreground service on Android.
• ../server/ - optional dependency-free Node.js backend for login, sync snapshots, backups, subscription state, and managed AI proxy calls.

Bring Your Own LLM

Chat features can call OpenAI, Anthropic, or OpenRouter directly from the renderer. You enter your API key in the buddy settings panel; it is stored in localStorage and never leaves the device except when talking to the provider you chose.

For a hosted product model, ../server/ adds optional accounts, sync, backups, subscription state, and managed AI calls through server-owned provider keys. See ../server/README.md.

Why Open Source?

AI coding agents are becoming part of everyday development, but the interface around them is still early. Vibebud is an experiment in making agent work:

• more visible
• more approachable
• easier to supervise
• a little more personal

Contributions are welcome around UI polish, agent integrations, buddy behaviors, desktop/mobile shells, accessibility, docs, and product ideas.

Name

The app is called Vibebud: your buddy during vibe coding.