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Vibesaur Extension

Solo product · shipped extension

The Overview

Commit quality is not commit count.

Vibesaur turns tidy diffs and clear messages into a living island pet — gamified discipline that stays 100% local, with no account and no cloud sync.

2K+ USERS IN FIRST 48H · 2026

Details

A pet that grows from how you commit. Launched into the editor marketplace and crossed two thousand installs in the first two days. People didn't just try it — they kept the island open while they worked.

Fast adoption, zero onboarding friction

Install, open Explorer, meet your dino. No signup wall — which is exactly why the first weekend felt loud.

  • 2K+ · DAY 1–2

Walk, weather, hunts, and home

An animated island in the sidebar — campfire, hut, slime hunts, and maps that react as your pet levels up.

  • Island · LIVING HABITAT

Your git stays on your machine

Vibesaur reads workspace git history only to score the pet. Nothing is uploaded. No account. No cloud pet server.

  • Local · PRIVACY FIRST

What if good commits felt as fun as a game?

Most developer tools lecture you about hygiene. Vibesaur does the opposite — it gives you a tiny dinosaur that only thrives when your commits are thoughtful.

Bloated diffs and junk messages hurt the pet. Small, clear, conventional commits feed it. Suddenly “feat: …” isn’t a style guide — it’s dinner.

That emotional loop is the product. Vibesaur isn’t a dashboard of guilt. It’s a creature you don’t want to disappoint.

Built to ship a real product people open every day

This wasn’t a weekend toy left in a private repo. Vibesaur was designed to live inside Cursor and VS Code — the place developers already spend hours — and to feel delightful the first time someone expands the Explorer panel.

The early traction mattered: roughly 2,000 people came in within the first two days. That signal said the joke landed, the craft held up, and the install path was short enough that curiosity converted.

For hiring and client work, Vibesaur is proof I can invent a sharp product idea, own the full build, polish the interaction design, and put it in front of strangers without a sales team.

A scoring loop that rewards craft

After you adopt a pet, only new commits in the open workspace count. Each scored commit moves hunger, health, and EXP. Diff size and message quality decide whether the dino feels fed or bruised.

The rules are intentionally readable. Keep changes tight. Write a message a teammate could skim. Treat conventional prefixes as a free buff. The game never needs a tutorial video — the feedback is the tutorial.

  • Tidy diffs (small change sets) boost health; bloated dumps chip it
  • Conventional / clear messages score higher than “wip” and “fix”
  • Long gaps raise hunger; the island still has light chaos (weather, hunts) so the world feels alive between commits
  • Leveling is steep on purpose — progress feels earned, not inflated

More than a mascot in a panel

The island is the face of the product, but the rest of the loop keeps people returning: a Pet Desk for vitals and contribution graph, a Star Store for classes and habitat items, map choices, and ambient music that can keep playing when you leave the panel.

Those extras matter because they turn a one-liner idea (“pet that eats commits”) into a small world with goals, unlocks, and personality — without ever leaving the editor.

Extension craft, not just cute sprites

Vibesaur is a TypeScript VS Code / Cursor extension: Explorer webview for the living island, extension host logic for git watching and scoring, and a packaging path to marketplace distribution.

The interesting constraint was making animation, state, and git feedback feel instant while staying local-only. That forced careful boundaries between host and webview, lean asset loading, and scoring rules that are deterministic enough to trust.

I don’t publish internal implementation dumps here — the point for readers is the outcome: a shipped, playful product with measurable early demand and a privacy-respecting architecture.

  • VS Code Extension API + TypeScript + esbuild packaging
  • Git-aware scoring from the open workspace only
  • Canvas / sprite island UI inside a sidebar webview
  • Marketplace install path with auto-update friendly releases

Idea → polish → strangers using it

Vibesaur is the kind of project I want on a portfolio: opinionated, fun, technically real, and validated by people who didn’t owe me a click.

If you’re hiring or commissioning product work, this is the energy I bring — playful concepts, serious shipping standards, and enough taste to make a tool feel alive.

Stack
  • TypeScript
  • VS Code Extension API
  • esbuild
  • simple-git
  • Canvas webview