bytepet-cli 0.2.0

⚡ A terminal pet that lives in your CLI — feed it, play with it, watch it grow

bytepet-cli

A tiny terminal pet for your command line: feed it, play with it, let it sleep, and watch its mood change over time.

  /\_____/\  
 (  ^   ^  ) 
 (  =^.^=  )        Pixel the Cat
 (--m-m----)        Level 3 · 245/300 XP

  Health     ██████████  100%
  Hunger     ███████░░░  70%
  Happiness  ████████░░  80%
  Energy     █████░░░░░  55%

  [f] Feed   [p] Play   [s] Sleep   [q] Quit

Install

npm install -g bytepet-cli

You can also install from PyPI if you prefer Python tooling:

pip install bytepet-cli

The PyPI package runs the same Node-powered terminal game, so Node.js still needs to be available on your machine.

Run

byte

The npm package also exposes:

bytepet

Helpful flags:

byte --help
byte --version
byte --status
byte --reset

What You Can Do

Bytepet is built around quick keyboard actions:

Key	Action	Effect
f	Feed	Hunger +30, happiness +5, XP +10
s	Sleep	Energy +40, health +5, XP +5
p	Play	Rock Paper Scissors, XP +5 to +15
q	Quit	Save and leave your pet for later

Your pet remembers you between sessions. Stats decay while you are away, so the next visit may find them hungry, tired, sad, or in need of care.

Save Management

byte --status prints your current pet stats without opening the interactive UI. byte --reset deletes your saved pet so you can adopt a new one on the next run.

Bytepet stores your pet locally in:

~/.byte-cli/pet.json

If the save file becomes unreadable, bytepet moves it aside as a .corrupt-...json backup and lets you adopt a fresh pet.

Pets And Moods

On first run, choose a cat, dog, or dragon and give it a name. Each pet has ASCII-art mood states driven by its stats:

Mood	Trigger
Happy	Stats are healthy
Hungry	Hunger is low
Sleepy	Energy is low
Sad	Happiness is low
Sick	Health is low

Progression

Feeding, sleeping, and playing all grant XP. Earn enough XP and your pet levels up, giving the little CLI companion a reason to keep living rent-free in your terminal.

Promo Video

The video/ folder contains the Remotion project used to render the promo:

cd video
npm install
npm run render

The rendered output lives at video/out/BytepetVideo.mp4.

License

MIT - Copyright (c) 2026 Muhammad Talha Khan