Hatch Pet Chibi Cartoon Desktop Pet Generator

What Problem It Solves

Desktop pet projects often stall on asset specs, animation states, and runtime synchronization: a reference image must become a chibi cartoon style, the spritesheet must match 8 columns × 11 rows and 1536×2288 px, and the animation must cover states such as idle, waiting, running, review, and failed. Hatch Pet turns these moving parts into a local toolchain for generating, validating, and displaying a desktop pet.

Core Capabilities and Workflow

• Generate a chibi pet: use qpet --image image.png to turn a character reference into cartoon frames; without an AI API it mainly applies scaling and style filters, while --ai + --api-key is needed for stronger stylization.
• Build a standard spritesheet: output spritesheet.webp, pet.json, and a zip package; the default spec is 192×208 px per cell, with 9 animation rows and 2 rows for 16-direction gaze.
• Display and interact on desktop: the desktop command uses tkinter to show a transparent borderless window, supporting left-click dragging, right-click menus, mouse following, and 16-direction gaze.
• AI agent status sync: with --watch, it polls ~/.hatch-pet/status.json and switches animations or bubbles based on states such as thinking, working, reviewing, done, and error.
• Validate specs: validate checks spritesheet dimensions, format, and configuration to reduce failures such as a window flashing out or misaligned coordinates.

Boundaries and Caveats

This tool is better suited for rapid prototyping and desktop status visualization than for replacing professional animation tools. desktop requires a graphical desktop environment, so headless servers or SSH sessions cannot create windows. Photo-to-chibi quality depends on reference image quality and model capability; front-facing, half-body shots with clean backgrounds and even lighting work best. Spritesheet specs may need adaptation when using different desktop pet frameworks.