Launched this week
claudemon
Wild Pokémon appear while you wait for Claude Code
207 followers
Wild Pokémon appear while you wait for Claude Code
207 followers
Half of Claude Code is waiting. claudemon makes that time a game: your prompts are steps through the grass, every 20s of work another step. Something jumps out, the status line says so, you fight it in a second terminal tab. All 151, fully local, no account.
claudemon
The thing that makes this work is that the game only advances while Claude does, which is also the trap. You're paying people in Pokémon for waiting, so a run that spins for 20 minutes and produces nothing still feels great. I'd tie the encounter to exit code rather than elapsed time. Then a failed run costs you the catch, and you've accidentally built the only test result anyone would actually watch for.
claudemon
@asadmalik901 Good idea, thanks! The idea is that several encounters can happen per agent run so that if the run is very long, people don't get bored with just waiting for one battle while Claude Code finishes to find out if it was caught or not
@zamarrowski That solves the pacing, fair enough. Then keep encounters on the timer and gate only the catch on exit code. You still get a battle every few minutes so nobody's staring at a dead status line, but if the run fails everything you caught in it gets away. Same loop, and it stops paying out for 20 minutes of spinning that produced nothing.
claudemon
@asadmalik901 Totally. But how do you actually know if the generated code is good or bad? If the agent just spins for 20 minutes and churns out garbage, you still get the Pokémon because the process technically finished with exit code 0, right?
Unless you tie the exit code to passing unit tests or a successful build.
@zamarrowski You don't, and I'd stop pretending otherwise. Exit code 0 only means nothing crashed, so the version I'd actually build is catch on green tests when the repo has a test command and fall back to the timer when it doesn't. The repos without one were never going to give you a signal anyway, and you'd be surprised how motivating it is to lose a Charizard because you skipped writing a test.
hey this sounds really fun! im wondering if it has any effect on wait times?
claudemon
@ethan_cheng Haha nope, absolutely none! It doesn't speed up or slow down Claude at all. Purely cosmetic (and much more fun to watch than a loading spinner)!
the second terminal tab angle is so weird it kind of works. caught myself actually looking forward to checking back in.
Going to give it a spin! Now the waiting while claude works is a real pain and I don't see it going away for the next few years. So loved this idea, super builder centric.
claudemon
@himanshu_garg Thanks! Exactly, waiting is just part of the deal for a while, so might as well make it fun. Let me know what you think when you give it a spin!
Congrats on the launch, @zamarrowski🚀
Converting idle wait time into a Pokemon game is such a clever idea. Context switching for 20-second waits usually kills focus, so keeping it right in the terminal is super smart. Love that it's open source and fully local too.
Good luck with the launch today!
claudemon
@founder_daksh Thanks a lot! Appreciate it 🙌 Exactly, the goal was to keep you hooked on the terminal instead of alt-tabbing while Claude takes a minute. Hope you enjoy checking it out!
The completionist in me sees "all 151, fully local" and immediately wants to leave long agent runs going just to fill out the Pokédex lol. You've somehow built the one dev tool that makes me want MORE waiting — nicely done.