terminalcreature 2.2.0

A small creature lives in your statusline. It is always hungry.

An egg sits in your Claude Code statusline, and it eats what you remember.
Every note you write is a meal, every meal is XP. Keep it fed and it hatches, then grows through five forms
across eight species, with a one-in-a-hundred shiny. It counts your files and never reads them. How rare is yours?

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day one                                  a few hundred notes later
+-----------+                            +-----------+
|    ___    |  [====......]  my-brain    |   .\|/.   |  [====......]  my-brain
|   /   \   |  Unhatched                 |  ( o o )  |  Drain . Sage Lv65 [=====.] +16 XP
|  ( ooo )  |                            |  /|ooo|\  |
|   \___/   |                            |   |___|   |
+-----------+                            |  /     \  |
                                         +-----------+

_{Shown in ascii mode. With unicode true (the default) the box is drawn with line glyphs and the bars with block characters.}

Why terminalcreature exists

A second brain only pays off if you keep writing to it, and nothing in a terminal rewards that. Streaks punish weekends. Timers reward sitting still. terminalcreature rewards the one thing that matters: a durable note landed on disk.

Every note you write is XP. The creature evolves through five forms as your vault grows, and it never loses a level when you tidy up. Not a streak you can drop, not a timer. Feed it or it sits there. That's the whole loop.

How It Works

your notes                terminalcreature                    statusline
----------------  -->  ----------------------  -->  ---------------------------
~/.claude/projects/*/     glob + stat only           +-----------+
  memory/*.md             (never open())             |   ( ' ' ) |  Zask . Adept Lv44
~/notes/**/*.md                |                     |  <|+++|>  |  [===...] +12 XP
a structured vault        weighted count = xp        |   /|_|\   |
                               |                     +-----------+
                     level = 100 * sqrt(xp / xp_max)
                               |
                     sprite = f(level, seed)

The egg banks XP from the moment it exists, including everything you'd written before you installed anything. So the first hatch isn't a blank slate, it's a reveal:

$ terminalcreature hatch

  the egg cracks

       _^_
     ( ' ' )
      /$$$\
       ^ ^

  Zask, a Legendary Nim (shiny)
  Lv41 Adept

Quick Start

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smejkaldesign/terminalcreature/main/bootstrap.sh | bash

Then, in Claude Code:

/creature-hatch

That's it. The installer wraps whatever statusline you already have rather than replacing it, lays your first egg, and tells you how to open it. The hatch is a short guided setup the first time: it looks for your notes, offers what it found with a file count each, and opens the egg at whatever level your writing has already earned.

Point it at your notes in the same breath; the bootstrap passes flags straight through to the installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/smejkaldesign/terminalcreature/main/bootstrap.sh | bash -s -- --folder ~/notes

Requirements

The first hatch asks three questions

/creature-hatch guides the first egg, because the things it can't guess are the ones that decide everything afterwards:

1. Where do your memories live? It looks for an Obsidian vault, a notes folder, and Claude Code's own memory, then offers what it found with a file count each. That sets provider and vault_root.
2. Score what's already written, or start from 0? Scoring is the default and opens the egg several forms in. --from-zero baselines what's there so only new notes count, for people who'd rather have the climb.
3. What's it called? Two fresh ideas from terminalcreature names, your own, or let the egg name itself at the reveal. Until it hatches the statusline just says Unhatched.

Later eggs inherit the first two answers. The name is asked for every egg.

Other ways to install

Installer flags

Re-running is safe and is how you pick up new commands. It won't wrap itself twice and it leaves an existing buddy alone.

How the wiring works

The installer wraps your existing statusline rather than editing it. It points statusLine.command at a small generated shim; the shim runs whatever command was there before, on the same stdin Claude Code hands it, then draws the creature to the left of that output. Your own script is never modified. It keeps a settings.json.pre-terminalcreature.bak, and --uninstall puts the original command back.

Project-level statuslines need one manual step. The installer only touches ~/.claude/settings.json. If a repo sets its own statusLine in <repo>/.claude/settings.json, wrap it explicitly, then point the project at the shim:

./install.sh --statusline "/path/to/repo/.claude/statusline.sh"
# then in <repo>/.claude/settings.json:
#   "statusLine": { "type": "command", "command": "~/.claude/terminalcreature/statusline-terminalcreature.sh" }

The Creature

Species and rarity

Eight species. The eyes and the body motif come from the species, so a Bramble is recognisable at a glance.

     _^_            _^_            _^_            _^_
   ( o o )        ( - - )        ( ^ ^ )        ( . . )
   <|ooo|>        <|~~~|>        <|***|>        <|...|>
    /   \          /   \          /   \          /   \
    ^   ^          ^   ^          ^   ^          ^   ^
     Mote           Wisp          Ember           Pip

     _^_            _^_            _^_            _^_
   ( o o )        ( v v )        ( ' ' )        ( > < )
   <|===|>        <|###|>        <|+++|>        <|///|>
    /   \          /   \          /   \          /   \
    ^   ^          ^   ^          ^   ^          ^   ^
     Fen          Bramble          Nim           Quill

The mark carries the tier without relying on colour, so it reads on a mono terminal or to a colour-blind user. On top of that, a 1% shiny roll remakes the body motif: symbols become $ (<|+++|> becomes <|$$$|>) and letters go uppercase (<|ooo|> becomes <|OOO|>).

All of it is a pure function of the seed. Hand-editing state.json can't promote a Common into a shiny Legendary; derived values are recomputed on every load and win.

The evolution ladder

Six sprites: the egg, then five forms gaining detail at every step.

    ___        _^_        _^_        \|/       .\|/.     *.\|/.*
   /   \     ( ' ' )    ( ' ' )    ( ' ' )    ( ' ' )   \( ' ' )/
  ( ooo )     /+++\     <|+++|>    <|+++|>    /|+++|\    /|+++|\
   \___/       ^ ^       /   \      /|_|\      |___|     =|___|=
                         ^   ^      ^   ^     /     \    ^     ^

    egg     Hatchling  Fledgling    Adept       Sage    Ascendant
 unhatched     0-19      20-39      40-59      60-79     80-100

The egg is a state, not a level

A buddy is an egg until you hatch it, whatever level it is. Level 0 is a Hatchling, a baby with a face, not an egg. Species, rarity, shiny, and stats are fixed the moment the egg exists, so an unhatched egg shows none of it:

$ terminalcreature card

       ___
      /   \
     ( ooo )
      \___/

  Unhatched
  0 xp eaten and counting
  /creature-hatch to find out what it is

Eggs bank XP while closed, so waiting costs nothing. A buddy added later with --add starts at 0 and hatches as a Hatchling, because XP banks per creature.

XP and Levelling

Where XP comes from

XP is a weighted count of markdown files in a memory system, so terminalcreature needs one to point at. Three providers, set with /creature config provider <name>:

terminalcreature doctor says which one is live, whether the root is there, what it counted, and what your buddy banked of that:

$ terminalcreature doctor
provider: folder (folder of notes)
root: ~/notes (found)
  notes      9
source xp 18 -> level 10
Zask banked 18 -> level 10 (Hatchling)

A zero reading has three causes, and doctor names the one you've got:

• the root isn't there: wrong path, or Claude Code hasn't written memory yet
• the root is real but empty: nothing to do but write things down
• the root has markdown the provider's layout doesn't match: pointing vault at a plain notes folder does this, and the fix is provider folder

No memory system at all? Then your buddy sits at level 0, which is a fair reading rather than a bug. The installer and doctor both hand you a prompt for it:

"Set up a persistent memory system for this project: one markdown file per durable fact in your memory directory, an index listing them, and write to it as we work."

How levelling works

Durable facts are worth more than session logs because they cost more to produce, and generated index files are excluded so they can't inflate the count for free. claude counts one source at ×3, folder counts every note at ×2, and vault weights per directory:

level = min(100, floor(100 * sqrt(xp / xp_max)))

A square root curve, so early memories move the needle hard and later ones don't. Level 100 is fully grown and the curve stops there. xp_max is the XP at level 100 and the one dial that controls pace; the default of 1500 puts a well-established vault around 65.

Want it slower? terminalcreature config xp_max 5000 triples the distance. Deleting memories never de-levels anyone: the high-water mark only rises, because tidying up shouldn't be punished.

The session counter

Right of the level bar, the caption shows what your buddy has eaten in this session:

Neux . Sage Lv66 [==....] +16 XP

It baselines the first time a session draws itself and is tracked per session id, since several are usually open at once. It stays hidden until there's something to show.

The Statusline

density picks how much room the inline segment takes (render, or an --inline install):

compose "<text>" is what the installed shim uses by default: your own text with the creature as a left column, sharing row one. The column is boxed in dark grey; config border false drops the box and gets two rows of height back. sprite_height 3 cuts the creature to three rows and keeps the evolution beats:

+-----------+
|   .\|/.   |  [====......]  my-brain (main)        .\|/.    [====......]  my-brain (main)
|  ( o o )  |  Drain . Sage Lv65 [=====.]          ( o o )   Drain . Sage Lv65 [=====.]
|  /|ooo|\  |                                      /|ooo|\
|   |___|   |                                       |___|
|  /     \  |                                      /     \
+-----------+
   border true                                        border false

Either way the column is pinned to the creature's widest form, so your text doesn't shift the day it evolves into an Ascendant. sprite needs a width and a statusline script is handed no terminal, so density ruler prints a ruler: read the last digit you can see and pass it to config columns <n>.

/creature-hide takes the creature out without uninstalling anything. XP keeps banking while it's hidden.

The roster

Keep several creatures. Only the focused one gains XP; the others hold their level and wait.

$ terminalcreature list
  O Drain      Lv65   Sage       Common
* o Zask       Lv0    Hatchling  Legendary shiny

* = focused (the one gaining xp)

/creature-new asks before it acts: --replace retires the current buddy and focuses a new egg, --add keeps it active and focuses a new egg. Neither deletes anything. A retired buddy keeps its banked XP and focus <name> brings it back. There's no level requirement, since the tradeoff is identical at level 12 and level 99.

Commands and Settings

terminalcreature new               lay an egg (--replace or --add, --yes to confirm)
terminalcreature hatch [--name <n>] [--from-zero]  open the egg, naming it as it opens
terminalcreature names             two fresh name ideas for the egg
terminalcreature card              the full creature card
terminalcreature list              the roster
terminalcreature focus <name>      choose who banks new xp, un-retires
terminalcreature rename <old> <new>
terminalcreature retire <name>     retires, keeps the record and its xp
terminalcreature hide / show       drop it from the statusline, or bring it back
terminalcreature config [key val]  see settings, or set one
terminalcreature simulate <xp>     preview any level without touching real state
terminalcreature sources           what it can count, and what to do if that's nothing
terminalcreature doctor            what can it see, and why is it zero
terminalcreature doctor --check    the same, plus a version check against pypi
terminalcreature update            ask pypi whether there's a newer terminalcreature
terminalcreature update --apply    and install it if there is, keeping your creature
terminalcreature render            the one-line statusline segment
terminalcreature compose "<text>"  your statusline text, creature as a left column
terminalcreature refresh           recompute the xp cache

Six are slash commands in Claude Code, so plain language reaches them without the CLI: /creature, /creature-new, /creature-hatch, /creature-hide, /creature-show, /creature-update.

After an install.sh or bootstrap install there's no terminalcreature on your PATH: the library is imported by the statusline, not installed as a binary. The slash commands reach everything you'd normally want. For the rest, alias it, or pipx install terminalcreature:

alias terminalcreature='PYTHONPATH="$HOME/.claude/terminalcreature/lib" python3 -m terminalcreature.cli'

Privacy Promise

Short enough to check yourself.

• It counts your files without ever opening them. The only filesystem calls in metric.py are glob and stat. It never calls open() on a note, never reads a byte of content, never parses frontmatter. That isn't a promise about what it does with your data; it's a statement that it never has your data.
• It never prints a path it matched, in any mode including doctor, which reports a home-relative root and counts rather than filenames.
• All state is local, at ~/.claude/terminalcreature/: the roster, your settings, and the XP cache. Nothing else, nowhere else.
• The render never opens a socket, and by default neither does anything it starts. No telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home.
• The only network calls are the ones you allowed. The installer (and terminalcreature update --apply) downloading a release tarball from api.github.com; terminalcreature update and doctor --check reading pypi's public package metadata; and, if you opt in with config update_check true, that same version request once a day from the background refresh so the yellow ⬆ update chip can appear. It's off by default and asked as a question. Every one is an unauthenticated GET that sends nothing about you or your memory.

Three tests enforce this. A runtime trap patches every file-reading builtin and asserts none fire during a measurement. A static pass tokenizes metric.py and fails if a reader appears in the code at all. A third guards every socket call, including in the background processes a render spawns: opted out, an aged cache plus a render produces zero network from any process; opted in, exactly one attempt per day, never from the render itself. A leak guard runs in CI and as a pre-push hook, failing the build if an absolute home path or a vault-shaped filename ever reaches the repo.

Under the Hood

Repository Structure

terminalcreature/
├── terminalcreature/            # the package, stdlib only
│   ├── cli.py             #   commands
│   ├── render.py          #   statusline segment, compose, card
│   ├── state.py           #   roster, settings, xp cache
│   ├── metric.py          #   providers: glob + stat, nothing else
│   ├── creature.py        #   seed → species, rarity, shiny
│   └── sprites.py         #   stage templates × species motifs
├── commands/              # the five Claude Code slash commands
├── site/                  # the website, deployed by pages.yml
├── install.sh             # wraps your statusline, lays the egg
├── bootstrap.sh           # curl | bash entry: fetches a release, runs install.sh
├── scripts/leak-guard.sh  # fails on machine paths and vault-shaped filenames
├── tests/                 # stdlib test suite, incl. the privacy traps
├── .claude-plugin/        # plugin manifest
└── marketplace/           # marketplace listing

Development

git clone https://github.com/smejkaldesign/terminalcreature && cd terminalcreature
python3 tests/test_terminalcreature.py     # synthetic fixtures in a temp dir; no real memory touched
./scripts/leak-guard.sh              # the same check CI runs
git config core.hooksPath .githooks  # optional pre-push copy of the guard

No virtualenv, nothing to install, no build step. Run the CLI from the clone with python3 -m terminalcreature.cli card. CI runs the suite on Python 3.9 through 3.13, builds the wheel, and installs under the stock macOS bash 3.2.

Contributing

Small project, short rules: stdlib only, Python 3.9 floor, one change per PR, new behavior gets a test, and the privacy tests must keep passing. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Provenance

Anthropic shipped a terminal pet in Claude Code (/buddy, April 2026). Nice idea, no progression: species and stats are recomputed from your user ID every session and never change. terminalcreature is a clean-room rebuild of the concept with the missing half added, growth you actually earn. No code, species names, sprite art, stat names, or hashing details were taken from it. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic.

License

MIT. See LICENSE. © 2026 Smejkal Design.