VibeCat

A cat pops up every half hour, holds up a sign that sends positive vibes, and leaves before you can argue with it.

VibeCat lives in your system tray. Every 30 minutes a small orange cat slides up from the bottom-right corner holding a hand-lettered sign with a positive affirmation on it. Ten seconds later it slides back down and leaves you alone.

That's it. That's the app.

Have a pawsome day :3

Install + run

npm install -g vibecat
vibecat

Or don't commit to anything:

npx vibecat

Node.js 18+. Windows tested. macOS and Linux "should work (tm)".

Run from source

git clone https://github.com/joeinvents/VibeCat.git vibecat
cd vibecat
npm install
npm start

Controls

• Right-click the tray icon — show one now, pause, quit.
• Double-click the tray icon — summon a cat on demand, for when you need it early.
• Everything else still works. The overlay sets setIgnoreMouseEvents(true, { forward: true }), so your clicks pass straight through the cat to whatever's behind it. You cannot accidentally close the window you were working in because a cat was in the way.

Tuning

Constants at the top of src/main.js:

| Constant | What it does | | --- | --- | | INTERVAL_MS | How often the cat visits (default 30m) | | VISIBLE_MS | How long it stays (default 10s) | | SLIDE_MS | Animation duration — keep in sync with the CSS transition | | WIDTH / HEIGHT | Overlay size | | MARGIN | Gap from the screen corner |

Releasing

CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs on every push/PR: installs on Ubuntu/Windows/macOS across Node 18 and 20, checks JS syntax, and dry-runs npm pack.

Publishing to npm (.github/workflows/publish.yml) happens when a GitHub Release is published, using the NPM_TOKEN repo secret. It refuses to publish if the release tag doesn't match package.json's version. To cut a release:

npm run release:patch   # or release:minor — bumps version, commits, tags, pushes
gh release create v$(node -p "require('./package.json').version") --generate-notes

(or create the release from the tag in the GitHub UI instead of gh release create).

License

MIT. It's a cat with a sign.