vimgarden

Cultivate ancient bonsai trees in your terminal. Modal Vim controls, real-time seasons, organic ASCII art, and zero external dependencies.

Comparison with cbonsai

While cbonsai is a fantastic procedural screensaver that generates a tree in ~2 seconds, vimgarden is a persistent Zen simulation and bonsai caretaking game:

Features

• Tokonoma Shelf: Cultivate a collection of 3 to 5 bonsai trees simultaneously, navigating with h/l or 1-5.
• Dynamic Seasons & Weather: Experience Spring 🌸, Summer ☀️, Autumn 🍁, and Winter ❄️ with rain auto-watering and seasonal growth synergies.
• Tree Age & Bonsai Styling: Trees age in real-world time (h, d, mo, y), gaining value. Shape branches using Copper Wire (c) into Formal (Chokkan), Informal (Moyogi), or Cascade (Kengai) styles.
• Organic ASCII Art: Detailed layered canopies (Dan-zukuri), driftwood trunks, drifting sakura petals, and ceramic pot pottery.
• Vim Modal Navigation:
  • NORMAL: h/l pot select, w water, f fertilize, c wire/style, x prune/harvest, p plant, s shop, i inventory, ? guide.
  • COMMAND: :w save, :q quit, :wq / :x save & quit, :q! force quit.
• Zero Dependencies: Pure Python standard library (curses). No pip packages required.
• Safe Persistence: Atomic JSON saves with automatic backup copy and corruption recovery.

Requirements

• Python >= 3.10
• Terminal window of at least 80x24 characters

Installation

Via pipx (Recommended)

pipx install vimgarden

Or with pip:

pip install --user vimgarden

From Source

git clone https://github.com/ShwoubleTrouble/vimgarden.git
cd vimgarden

# Lightweight install to ~/.local/bin/ (no pip/venv overhead):
./install.sh

# Or uninstall:
./install.sh --uninstall

Running

# Via console script:
vimgarden

# Or directly as module:
python3 -m vimgarden

Running Tests

python3 -m unittest discover tests

License

GPL-3.0