buddy-pick — Pick your Claude Code /buddy companion

Install

npx buddy-pick

Or install globally:

npm install -g buddy-pick
buddy-pick

Features

Browse Species Gallery

View all 18 species ASCII art side-by-side with eye styles, hat types, and rarity tiers — directly in your terminal.

Bruteforce Search

Filter by species, rarity, eyes, hat, and shiny status. buddy-pick iterates candidate salts at thousands per second (via a bun subprocess for hash accuracy) and finds the perfect companion for you.

Claudex

Your personal companion collection. Every patched buddy is automatically saved to the Claudex (~/.config/buddy-pick/claudex.json). When a Claude Code update overwrites your binary, open the Claudex and re-apply any saved companion with one click — no bruteforcing needed. You can also preview, rename, or delete entries.

Rename Companion

Change your companion's name without modifying the binary. Writes directly to ~/.claude.json — takes effect immediately, no restart needed.

Preview Custom Salt

Enter any 15-character salt and instantly see what companion it would produce — species, rarity, stats, hat, eyes, and shiny status — all rendered in a boxed card with stat bars.

Restore from Backup

One-click restore to the original binary from the .buddy-pick.bak backup.

Species

All 18 companion species, rendered in ASCII:

Duck              Goose             Blob
    __                 (·>             .----.
  <(· )___             ||             ( ·  · )
   (  ._>            _(__)_           (      )
    `--´              ^^^^             `----´

Cat               Dragon            Octopus
   /\_/\            /^\  /^\           .----.
  ( ·   ·)         <  ·  ·  >         ( ·  · )
  (  ω  )          (   ~~   )         (______)
  (")_(")           `-vvvv-´          /\/\/\/\

Owl               Penguin           Turtle
   /\  /\           .---.              _,--._
  ((·)(·))          (·>·)             ( ·  · )
  (  ><  )         /(   )\           /[______]\
   `----´           `---´             ``    ``

Snail             Ghost             Axolotl
 ·    .--.           .----.         }~(______)~{
  \  ( @ )          / ·  · \        }~(· .. ·)~{
   \_`--´           |      |          ( .--. )
  ~~~~~~~           ~`~``~`~          (_/  \_)

Capybara          Cactus            Robot
  n______n         n  ____  n          .[||].
 ( ·    · )        | |·  ·| |         [ ·  · ]
 (   oo   )        |_|    |_|         [ ==== ]
  `------´           |    |           `------´

Rabbit            Mushroom          Chonk
   (\__/)          .-o-OO-o-.         /\    /\
  ( ·  · )        (__________)       ( ·    · )
 =(  ..  )=          |·  ·|          (   ..   )
  (")__(")           |____|           `------´

Hats

Non-common companions can wear one of 7 hats:

crown           tophat          propeller       halo
   \^^^/           [___]            -+-            (   )
   .----.          .----.          .----.          .----.
  ( ·  · )        ( ·  · )        ( ·  · )        ( ·  · )
  (      )        (      )        (      )        (      )
   `----´          `----´          `----´          `----´

wizard          beanie          tinyduck
    /^\            (___)            ,>
   .----.          .----.          .----.
  ( ·  · )        ( ·  · )        ( ·  · )
  (      )        (      )        (      )
   `----´          `----´          `----´

Eyes

Six eye styles: · ✦ × ◉ @ °

Rarity

| Rarity | Stars | Chance | Stat Floor | | --------- | ----- | ------ | ---------- | | Common | ★ | 60% | 5 | | Uncommon | ★★ | 25% | 15 | | Rare | ★★★ | 10% | 25 | | Epic | ★★★★ | 4% | 35 | | Legendary | ★★★★★ | 1% | 50 |

Plus a 1% shiny chance on any rarity.

How It Works

Claude Code generates companions deterministically:

userId + SALT ─→ wyhash ─→ mulberry32 PRNG ─→ rarity ─→ species ─→ eyes ─→ hat ─→ shiny ─→ stats

The SALT is a 15-byte string baked into the Claude binary. Same user + same salt = same companion, every time. buddy-pick finds the salt using a nearby immutable constant as a structural anchor, previews what different salts produce, and patches the binary when you've found your match.

Why a bun subprocess?

The production binary uses Bun.hash() (wyhash). No npm package produces matching output — we tested wyhash (v1.0.0) and xxhash-wasm, both differ. So buddy-pick spawns a long-lived bun process and pipes hash requests through stdin/stdout. Falls back to FNV-1a with a warning if bun isn't available.

Requirements

• Claude Code >= 2.1.89 (buddy system introduced in this version)
• Node.js >= 18
• Bun (recommended — auto-detected for accurate hash computation)

Limitations

• Auto-updates overwrite patches — Claude Code updates replace the binary. Re-run buddy-pick to re-apply. Your backup is preserved.
• Hash accuracy requires bun — Without bun, previews use FNV-1a and may not match production.
• Restart needed after patching — The running Claude Code instance loads the binary at startup. Restart it after patching to see your new companion.

License

MIT