petdex

/home/avalon/.hermes/skills/productivity/petdex/SKILL.md · raw

Petdex Skill

Browse, install, and select animated "pet" mascots from the public petdex gallery. An installed pet reacts to agent activity (idle, running a tool, reviewing, error, done) across the Hermes CLI, TUI, and desktop app. This skill drives the hermes pets CLI and the display.pet config — it does not generate sprites.

When to Use

The user wants a desktop/terminal mascot or asks about "pets" / petdex.
The user wants to change, preview, or disable the active pet.
Diagnosing why a pet isn't showing (terminal graphics support, config).

Prerequisites

Network access to petdex.dev for the gallery/manifest (read-only, no auth).
Pillow (a core Hermes dependency) for sprite decoding — already installed.
For full-fidelity terminal rendering: a graphics-capable terminal (kitty, Ghostty, WezTerm, iTerm2, or sixel). Otherwise a truecolor Unicode half-block fallback is used automatically.

How to Run

Use the terminal tool to run hermes pets <subcommand>.

Quick Reference

Goal	Command
Browse the gallery	`hermes pets list` (add a substring to filter: `hermes pets list cat`)
List installed pets	`hermes pets list --installed`
Install a pet	`hermes pets install <slug>` (add `--select` to make it active)
Set the active pet	`hermes pets select <slug>` (omit slug for a picker)
Resize the pet everywhere	`hermes pets scale <factor>` (e.g. `0.5`, clamped 0.1–3.0)
Preview/animate in terminal	`hermes pets show [slug] [--cycle] [--state run]`
Disable the pet	`hermes pets off`
Remove a pet	`hermes pets remove <slug>`
Diagnose setup	`hermes pets doctor`

Procedure

Find a pet: hermes pets list <query> and note its slug.
Install + activate: hermes pets install <slug> --select.
Preview it: hermes pets show (Ctrl+C to stop).
Confirm setup: hermes pets doctor — shows the resolved pet, configured render mode, detected terminal graphics protocol, and effective mode.

Pets install into <HERMES_HOME>/pets/<slug>/ (profile-aware). Selecting a pet writes display.pet.slug + display.pet.enabled to config.yaml.

Configuration

Under display.pet in config.yaml:

enabled (bool) — master on/off.
slug (str) — active pet; empty = first installed.
render_mode — auto (detect) | kitty | iterm | sixel | unicode | off.
scale (float) — on-screen size of the native 192×208 frames (default 0.33, clamped 0.1–3.0). One knob resizes every surface; set it with hermes pets scale <factor>, the /pet scale slash command, or the desktop Appearance slider.
unicode_cols (int) — width in columns for the Unicode fallback.

Pitfalls

A pet only shows once one is installed AND selected (enabled: true).
Inside a pipe/redirect (no TTY) terminal rendering is disabled by design.
The petdex npm CLI installs to ~/.codex/pets; Hermes uses its own profile-scoped <HERMES_HOME>/pets/ instead — install through hermes pets.

Verification

hermes pets doctor reports ✓ ready when a pet is installed, selected, enabled, and Pillow is importable.