Pawly — a virtual pet that lives in your browser (and truly respects your privacy)

I'm a solo developer and I've been building Pawly for a while now: a virtual pet that lives in your browser while you work. It has its own personality, earns XP and gems as you use it, you can dress it up with skins from a wardrobe shop, and it comes with built-in productivity tools (Pomodoro, habit tracking, daily intentions) so it's not just decoration—it also helps you focus.

The idea started simply: I wanted something that felt alive in the tab, without being a burden on the browser or another extension asking for unnecessary permissions.

A couple of things I'm proud of, for those curious about how it's built:

Minimal permissions, truly. We don't ask for <all_urls>, we don't intercept your requests, and we don't read the DOM of the pages you visit. All the heavy logic runs on Cloudflare Workers, not in your browser.

Only one instance, always. If you have 20 tabs open, Pawly doesn't run 20 times—I built a "Tab-Lock" architecture that keeps only one instance active and silently passes state when switching tabs.

A real audit, not a marketing one. I asked a third party to audit the entire backend. They found things to fix—and I fixed them all. I prefer to be upfront about it rather than pretend it was perfect from the start.

I'm still building this on my own, so all feedback (good or brutal) is welcome. What would you add to your ideal browser companion? 🐾

website: https://usepawly.com