# PixelPaw AI

> A free, open-source animated desktop pet for Windows 10 and 11. It lives on your
> desktop as a transparent always-on-top window, reacts to your cursor and typing,
> runs Pomodoro timers, sends water and break reminders, controls music playback,
> and reacts when a coding agent finishes a task. An optional AI companion supports
> Claude Code, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, OpenAI-compatible endpoints and local
> Ollama models.

Current version: 0.2.9 (released 13 August 2026)
Licence: Apache-2.0 (free and open source, no account required)
Platform: Windows 10 and Windows 11, x64
Download size: 1.78 MB (NSIS installer, unsigned)
Runtime memory: roughly 25 MB idle

PixelPaw AI is an original work. The characters, art, animation and code are
original archetypes and are not affiliated with, derived from, or copies of any
existing product or franchise.

## What it does

- **Desktop presence.** A transparent, frameless, always-on-top window. The rest of
  the desktop stays clickable because the app hit-tests the cursor against the cat's
  silhouette and toggles click-through.
- **Reacts to you.** Eye gaze follows the cursor, the cat kneads its paws while you
  type, overheats if you type very fast, and responds to scrolling. It counts
  keystrokes for timing only and never records which keys.
- **Handle it.** Drag and fling it with spring physics, stroke it to make it purr,
  tap it repeatedly and it gets progressively more fed up.
- **Productivity.** Pomodoro with presets (25/5, 30/15, 50/10, 90/20), water and
  stretch reminders at intervals up to 90 minutes, scheduled reminders with
  once/daily/weekday recurrence, and a task list it nudges you about.
- **Media control.** A pill slides out above the pet on hover with previous,
  play/pause, next and volume. It drives the standard OS media keys, so it works
  with Spotify, a browser tab, or any local player.
- **Games and progression.** Reaction and memory mini-games earn XP, and a bond
  level deepens from Stranger to Special Bond through ordinary use.
- **Characters.** Three species — a cat, a dog and a panda — each drawn with its own
  ears, tail, muzzle and markings rather than as a recolour, and all sharing one
  animation rig. Plus five cat costumes: robot, caped hero, masked acrobat,
  armoured tech, and a samurai with a cinematic entrance. Everything recolourable.
- **Sound.** Seven short cues, synthesised rather than shipped as audio files, on
  the moments worth hearing: a session finishing, a focus block ending, a reminder
  falling due, a failure. One instrument across all of them. Off in one click.
- **Two registers of speech.** Ordinary chatter appears in a speech bubble;
  anything worth knowing while you are looking elsewhere unrolls on a paper scroll,
  so the two are distinguishable at a glance.
- **Languages.** The interface ships in English and Telugu. The AI companion can
  additionally reply in Hindi or a Telugu-English mix.
- **Coding-agent reactions.** A loopback-only HTTP endpoint on 127.0.0.1 lets a
  coding agent post its status, and the pet reacts when work starts, succeeds or
  fails. A bundled command, `pixelpaw-ai notify <status> --agent <name>`, finds the
  token itself, labels the session with the current folder name, and exits quietly
  when the pet is not running, so it is safe inside a build script.
- **Agent setup for the tool you use.** The app detects Claude Code, Codex, Cursor,
  Antigravity, Kiro and Gemini CLI. Claude Code connects in one click by writing
  hooks into its own settings file, keeping a backup of the original. The others
  get the exact rule to paste into their own instructions file — AGENTS.md,
  .cursor/rules, .kiro/steering or GEMINI.md — plus a command to verify it.
- **It sits beside your agent.** When a coding agent's window takes focus, the pet
  moves to just above that window's input box, and returns to where it was when the
  window loses focus.

## Privacy

PixelPaw AI is local-first. There is no telemetry, no keystroke logging, no
screenshots and no network calls unless you enable the AI companion and chat with
it. Turning an interaction off stops that monitoring entirely. API keys are stored
by the Rust layer in the app's local data directory and are never exposed to the
web view.

## Common questions

- **Where is the menu?** Right-click the pet. Windows files new notification-area
  icons into the hidden overflow flyout behind the `^` arrow on the taskbar, so the
  tray icon is often invisible on first run. The right-click menu carries the same
  items: show/hide, pause, Pomodoro, media, chat, games, settings and quit.
- **How do I quit?** Right-click the pet and choose Quit PixelPaw, or use the Quit
  button at the bottom of Settings.
- **Why does SmartScreen warn me?** The installer is unsigned. Choose
  "More info" then "Run anyway" if you are happy to proceed.
- **Does it need an internet connection?** No. It works fully offline. Only the
  optional AI chat makes network calls, and only to the provider you configure.

## Links

- [Home](https://srj-ai.github.io/pixelpaw-ai/): the landing page, with a live
  interactive cat you can pet in the browser.
- [Download 0.2.9](https://github.com/SRJ-ai/pixelpaw-ai/releases/download/v0.2.9/PixelPaw.AI_0.2.9_x64-setup.exe): the Windows x64 installer.
- [Releases](https://github.com/SRJ-ai/pixelpaw-ai/releases): all versions and
  release notes.
- [Source](https://github.com/SRJ-ai/pixelpaw-ai): the full source, built with
  Tauri v2, Rust, React and TypeScript.
- [FAQ](https://srj-ai.github.io/pixelpaw-ai/faqs.txt): longer answers to common
  questions.