Petdex Skill

Browse, install, and select animated "pet" mascots from the public
petdex gallery. An installed pet
reacts to agent activity (idle, running a tool, reviewing, error, done) across
the Hermes CLI, TUI, and desktop app. This skill drives the hermes pets CLI
and the display.pet config — it does not generate sprites.

When to Use

• The user wants a desktop/terminal mascot or asks about "pets" / petdex.
• The user wants to change, preview, or disable the active pet.
• Diagnosing why a pet isn't showing (terminal graphics support, config).

Prerequisites

• Network access to petdex.dev for the gallery/manifest (read-only, no auth).
• Pillow (a core Hermes dependency) for sprite decoding — already installed.
• For full-fidelity terminal rendering: a graphics-capable terminal (kitty,
  Ghostty, WezTerm, iTerm2, or sixel). Otherwise a truecolor Unicode
  half-block fallback is used automatically.

How to Run

Use the terminal tool to run hermes pets <subcommand>.

Quick Reference

Goal	Command
Browse the gallery	hermes pets list (add a substring to filter: hermes pets list cat)
List installed pets	hermes pets list --installed
Install a pet	hermes pets install <slug> (add --select to make it active)
Set the active pet	hermes pets select <slug> (omit slug for a picker)
Resize the pet everywhere	hermes pets scale <factor> (e.g. 0.5, clamped 0.1–3.0)
Preview/animate in terminal	hermes pets show [slug] [--cycle] [--state run]
Disable the pet	hermes pets off
Remove a pet	hermes pets remove <slug>
Diagnose setup	hermes pets doctor

Procedure

1. Find a pet: hermes pets list <query> and note its slug.
2. Install + activate: hermes pets install <slug> --select.
3. Preview it: hermes pets show (Ctrl+C to stop).
4. Confirm setup: hermes pets doctor — shows the resolved pet, configured
   render mode, detected terminal graphics protocol, and effective mode.

Pets install into <HERMES_HOME>/pets/<slug>/ (profile-aware). Selecting a pet
writes display.pet.slug + display.pet.enabled to config.yaml.

Configuration

Under display.pet in config.yaml:

• enabled (bool) — master on/off.
• slug (str) — active pet; empty = first installed.
• render_mode — auto (detect) | kitty | iterm | sixel | unicode | off.
• scale (float) — on-screen size of the native 192×208 frames (default 0.33,
  clamped 0.1–3.0). One knob resizes every surface; set it with
  hermes pets scale <factor>, the /pet scale slash command, or the desktop
  Appearance slider.
• unicode_cols (int) — width in columns for the Unicode fallback.

Pitfalls

• A pet only shows once one is installed AND selected (enabled: true).
• Inside a pipe/redirect (no TTY) terminal rendering is disabled by design.
• The petdex npm CLI installs to ~/.codex/pets; Hermes uses its own
  profile-scoped <HERMES_HOME>/pets/ instead — install through hermes pets.

Verification

• hermes pets doctor reports ✓ ready when a pet is installed, selected,
  enabled, and Pillow is importable.