claude-pokemon

claude-pokemon keeps a pixel Pokémon at the right end of the band above the Claude Code prompt and makes it react to your session. It shows which tool Claude is running, calls you over when Claude is waiting on you, drops a Poké Ball for each subagent and earns XP for every answered turn until it evolves. You choose it from all 151 gen 1 Pokémon, in default or shiny colors.

It shares the band with cc-pokedex, but that one is a catching game where wild creatures spawn from your prompts; here you raise a single partner. claude-pets is the closer cousin, a pixel pet that reacts to the session from its own pane instead of the band.

What it does

• Follows Claude’s tools. While the main agent runs a tool, a thought bubble by the mon’s head shows a pencil for edits, a magnifier for reads, searches and web fetches, >_ for shell commands, a Poké Ball for subagents and a wrench for anything else, MCP tools included. While Claude thinks, the bubble fills with dots, and while Claude works the mon paces.
• Calls you over. It stops, faces you and shows a red ! when Claude asks you a question, wants a plan approved, opens a permission dialog or sends a notification that it needs input. If a turn ends and you say nothing for a minute, the ! shows for two minutes. Typing, sending a prompt or any /pokemon command clears it.
• Flinches on errors. A tool call that fails makes it shake, then hold still with a sweat drop. Calls you deny or interrupt don’t count.
• Tracks subagents. Each subagent drops a Poké Ball along the left of the strip. It wobbles while the subagent works and pops when it reports back. Past six, the last slot shows +n.
• Levels up and evolves. Each answered turn earns XP, double for turns of two minutes or more. With 30-second turns and full meters, level 5 to 16 takes about 75 turns. At its evolution level from Red and Blue it evolves once idle. Mons that need a stone or a trade, like Pikachu and Eevee, evolve with /pokemon evolve.
• Needs care. Food empties in 8 hours and happiness in 12. /pokemon feed drops a berry it walks over to eat, and /pokemon pet sends up hearts. Below 30% it thinks of a berry or a heart. Fuller meters earn more XP.
• Sleeps. Idle, it wanders the strip. After five minutes with no activity it falls asleep.
• Attacks. /pokemon attack plays a random move from its moveset, or a named one like /pokemon attack thunderbolt. Each of the 135 gen 1 moves has its own pixel animation.

Install

Needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later and, in the terminal, a truecolor one such as iTerm2, Ghostty, kitty or WezTerm. Light and dark themes both work.

claude plugin marketplace add dgokcin/claude-pokemon-mod
claude plugin install pokemon@claude-pokemon

Abra shows until you pick a partner with /pokemon charmander or any other name from /pokemon list. A new session starts with the mon you picked last. /pokemon alone lists every option, from stats and box to toggles for wandering, needs and automatic evolution. Ctrl+X Ctrl+A, Claude Code’s own binding, collapses the band.

How it works

The mon takes the right end of the band above the prompt, so anything other mods draw there keeps the left. The band is as tall as the mon needs: 7 rows for Diglett, 17 for Fearow, Gyarados and Pidgeot. The Desktop app’s Code tab gets the same pixels as an image, with the level and meters beside it as text.

It reads the name of each tool the main agent calls, whether the call failed and what the permission check decided. It looks at an error’s text only to spot Claude Code’s wording for a denied or interrupted call. It also reads notification types, the spinner’s thinking mode and your theme setting. prompt.edit and prompt.submit only mark you as active: it never reads what you type. It makes no network calls, and nothing reaches the model, since the mod answers /pokemon itself.

Its state lives in Claude Code’s plugin store on your machine: the last mon picked, the toggles, a record per mon you’ve raised (XP, meters, nickname), pet and feed counts, and a timestamp written every 10 seconds so the meters drain at a quarter speed while Claude Code is closed. Open sessions share the store, so two sessions showing the same mon share its level and meters.

The sprites are the gen 1 GIFs from Jakob Hoeg Mørk’s vscode-pokemon. The author describes the mod as an unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with Nintendo, Creatures, Game Freak or The Pokémon Company. The repository has no license file.

Limitations

• Nothing shows in the VS Code extension’s chat panel, the mobile app or claude -p, which have no band to draw in.
• Some organizations run a policy plugin that blocks classic.* events from user plugins. Under one, the ! still shows for questions, plan approvals and the idle minute, but not for permission dialogs.
• Only the main agent’s tools show in the bubble or make the mon flinch. Subagents appear only as Poké Balls.
• In a short pane the whole scene shrinks to fit. Below 4 rows it turns into one line of text with the name, level and meters.