Yesterday Claude Code’s source got leaked and people started spotting teasers for a “buddy system.” Then today (April 1st) the /buddy command actually shipped in Claude Code v2.1.89, and it basically hatches a Tamagotchi-style virtual pet that lives inside your terminal while you code. It’s free, it doesn’t count toward usage, and it does absolutely nothing useful… which is exactly why it’s kind of hilarious. In this video I walk through how to enable it (important: you need to run Claude Code in your terminal, not just the VS Code extension), then I hatch my own pet live. I pulled Vortex, a common turtle with very high CHAOS and basically zero patience—Claude Code is calling me out. I also break down the RPG-style collector mechanics: 18 species, rarity tiers (common through legendary), shiny variants, hats, eye variations, and five stats (debugging, patience, chaos, wisdom, snark) that are initialized from your coding history. The big “gotcha” is you only get one buddy per account—your pet is deterministically seeded from your user ID—so whatever you hatch, you’re stuck with it (politely).