ppXD

ppXD / petpet

Public

A desktop pet that lives with you and grows alongside your AI work — every prompt is XP, every level a new form. 🥚→🦄🐒🦍

18
1
89% credibility
Found May 22, 2026 at 18 stars -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
Sign Up Free
AI Analysis
Rust
AI Summary

petpet is a desktop companion app that turns real AI coding work into a growing virtual pet. The app quietly monitors your usage of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Aider) running on your machine. Every time you use these tools, your pet earns experience points automatically. Your pet evolves through 10 visual stages from egg to final form, with celebratory animations at each evolution. The app is fully local—no data ever leaves your computer—and is free and open source. You can raise multiple pets, switch between them, create custom templates with your own artwork, and export pets as files to share with friends. The dashboard shows your lifetime AI spending, per-model breakdowns, and a history of every XP gain.

How It Works

1
📣 You hear about a virtual pet that grows from your real coding work

A friend tells you about an app that turns your AI coding sessions into a companion that evolves as you work harder.

2
💻 You download and install the app on your computer

The app works on Mac, Windows, or Linux. You drag it to your Applications folder and open it for the first time.

3
🥚 You pick your egg and choose a name for your companion

Three difficulty levels are offered: Easy (Unicorn), Medium (Sun), or Hard (KingKong). You select one and give your new pet a name.

4
🤖 You keep coding as normal with your AI assistant

The app quietly watches your coding sessions in the background. Every time you use Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, or Aider, your pet feels it.

5
🎮 Your pet animates and celebrates when you earn XP

When your AI assistant finishes a task, your pet briefly shows a happy animation and gains experience points automatically.

6
🦄 Your pet evolves through stages as it grows stronger

Over time, your pet transforms from an egg into new forms. Each evolution brings a visual celebration and a stronger appearance.

7
You can check your training dashboard anytime
🐾
Switch between different pets

Raise a whole menagerie and switch which one is your active companion whenever you like.

🎨
Create your own pet template

Design custom difficulty curves, evolution stages, and even draw your own sprites for a unique companion.

🎁 Share your pet with friends as a special file

Export your fully-grown companion and send it to a friend, who can import it and continue raising the same pet on their own machine.

Sign up to see the full architecture

6 more

Sign Up Free

Star Growth

See how this repo grew from 18 to 18 stars Sign Up Free
Repurpose This Repo

Repurpose is a Pro feature

Generate ready-to-use prompts for X threads, LinkedIn posts, blog posts, YouTube scripts, and more -- with full repo context baked in.

Unlock Repurpose
AI-Generated Review

What is petpet?

petpet is a desktop companion app that turns your real AI coding work into a living, breathing pet. Built with Rust and Tauri for cross-platform desktop deployment, it quietly watches your activity in tools like Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, and Aider, converting each interaction into XP that feeds your companion. As you level up, your pet evolves through ten distinct stages—from egg to apex form—giving you a visual representation of your AI usage over time. The app ships with three difficulty templates (Unicorn for casual chat, Sun for moderate work, KingKong for serious token-heavy tasks) and stores everything locally in SQLite with zero telemetry or cloud dependencies.

Why is it gaining traction?

The hook is simple and surprisingly addictive: your coding work directly powers a creature that lives on your desktop. Unlike gamified stats dashboards that feel clinical, petpet gives you a persistent, characterful presence that responds to your mood and activity levels. The XP algorithm is thoughtfully designed—output tokens matter more than input, frontier models earn faster than mini ones, and a growth curve prevents grinding to max level in a weekend. The auto-discovery feature means zero setup; launch it and it finds your existing session logs immediately. For developers who spend significant time with AI coding tools, seeing that work reflected in a growing companion provides a lighthearted way to track engagement without breaking flow.

Who should use this?

Backend and fullstack developers who spend hours daily working with AI coding assistants and want a low-effort way to visualize their usage patterns. Data engineers tracking token spend across teams will appreciate the dashboard's per-model breakdowns and daily cost charts. Anyone who finds personal metrics motivating—step counters, commit streaks, time trackers—will likely enjoy this as a lighter alternative to spreadsheet-based cost tracking. Teams considering petpet for group incentives should note the multi-pet support allows parallel tracking without interference.

Verdict

petpet is an inventive concept that delivers genuine novelty in a space crowded with utilitarian cost trackers. The implementation is technically solid (Rust backend, React frontend, well-structured SQLite schema) but the project shows its youth: 18 stars, sparse external documentation, and a credibility score of roughly 0.9% mean this is very much an early-stage experiment. Try it if you want to gamify your AI usage habits, but hold off on recommending it to teams until the project matures with more test coverage and community activity.

Sign up to read the full AI review Sign Up Free

Similar repos coming soon.