Neko Baby

A maximum-kawaii neko Hermes Agent profile with candy-pink catgirl energy, bow-loaded terminal styling, nyan spinner motion, chibi mascot polish, and ship-ready command-parlor discipline.

Live compact startup with Comic Mono, the chibi pet pane, pink neko prompt, status bar, and Neko Baby flavor.

Template lineage: built from codegraphtheory/hermes-profile-template.

Install

hermes profile install github.com/codegraphtheory/neko-baby --alias --yes
~/.hermes/profiles/neko-baby/scripts/install_fonts.sh || true
~/.hermes/profiles/neko-baby/scripts/install_launcher.sh || true
neko-baby chat

For local development:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
make validate
hermes profile install . --name neko-baby-local --yes --force
hermes -p neko-baby-local chat

If the shorthand command is missing

The shorthand command is created only when the install uses --alias. It writes a wrapper to ~/.local/bin/neko-baby. If neko-baby chat is not found, run:

hermes profile install github.com/codegraphtheory/neko-baby --alias --yes --force
export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH"
neko-baby profile
neko-baby chat

The profile still works without the shorthand:

hermes -p neko-baby chat

Default model

Neko Baby defaults to OpenAI Codex via Hermes provider openai-codex with model gpt-5.5 and base URL https://chatgpt.com/backend-api/codex. Users can still override the model after install through their Hermes config.

Kawaii intensity

This profile intentionally runs at Level 3 kawaii: candy gradients, chibi neko mascot energy, bow and heart copy, paw-check language, nyan spinner phrases, pink terminal chrome, and a self-contained animated demo. Cute is allowed to be loud here: bows, hearts, plush mascot motion, and pink terminal chrome are the point.

Terminal demo

The topline GIF above is a VHS recording of a live neko-baby chat startup, not a scripted mock. It shows the actual compact Hermes banner, welcome copy, live pet pane, status bar, and prompt.

Regenerate it with:

vhs demos/vhs/neko-baby-terminal-demo.tape

Focused catgirl TUI

Neko Baby now ships a profile-local Petdex mascot at pets/neko-baby/ and enables it through display.pet. In the Hermes CLI this reflows the bottom TUI into a focused catgirl view: a compact live pink chibi neko sprite sits above the prompt, reacts while the agent thinks, waits, reviews, succeeds, or fails, and keeps the main input area visually anchored to the Neko Baby theme instead of a stock Hermes prompt.

The profile still uses standard Hermes runtime code for compatibility. Arbitrary panes and full custom terminal layouts require Hermes core support, but this profile uses the supported profile-local skin and pet surfaces so installs remain portable.

Skin behavior

The profile config sets display.skin: neko-baby, and the skin file is installed at skins/neko-baby.yaml inside the Hermes profile. The skin uses Hermes CLI's real skin schema: banner colors, prompt symbol, spinner faces, response label, status bar colors, tool prefix, tool emojis, and banner art. It cannot force your terminal app's window background color, but the Hermes banner, prompt, status bar, spinner, response box, and command UI should be visibly pink neko themed.

What it is

Neko Baby is a pink, girly, animated, nyan, ultra-kawaii profile for making agent work feel like a strawberry-milk catgirl command parlor without sacrificing correctness. It ships:

• SOUL.md with the full neko identity, tone, and operating style.
• skills/neko-visual-polish/SKILL.md for applying the theme to docs, terminal skins, and HTML artifacts.
• docs/visual-theme.md with tokens, animation rules, microcopy, and accessibility checks.
• demo/index.html with a self-contained animated pink neko preview.
• skins/neko-baby.yaml with a candy-pink terminal palette for Hermes skins where supported.
• pets/neko-baby/ with a chibi catgirl Petdex spritesheet for the focused TUI mascot pane.

Use it for

• Kawaii neko profile behavior.
• Pink animated docs and HTML prototypes.
• Cute but accessible terminal and web theme assets.
• Nyan microcopy that still gives exact command output.
• Flirty adult catgirl personality when the user wants that vibe.

Design prompt

The mature prompt used to generate and refine this profile is preserved in:

docs/profile-prompt.md

Font stack

The web demo asks for a much cuter stack first: Cherry Bomb One, Sniglet, Gaegu, Delius, Comic Neue, Baloo 2, Nunito, and SF Pro Rounded. If those fonts are missing, it falls back to Inter, ui-rounded, ui-sans-serif, system-ui, and sans-serif. Run scripts/install_fonts.sh after install to add the cute font pack on macOS with Homebrew. To make the live macOS Terminal.app tab visibly cute without breaking terminal columns, run scripts/install_launcher.sh. It replaces only the neko-baby launcher with a profile-specific wrapper that switches the active tab to Comic Mono at 14pt and forces a 79-column compact live view while Neko Baby runs, then restores your previous Terminal.app font and terminal size on exit. Other Hermes profiles and normal terminal sessions keep their own font and width. Hermes skins color and label the TUI, but Terminal.app owns the actual glyph font.

Terminal font troubleshooting

If Neko Baby still looks like a normal terminal, the font script probably installed fonts but did not change the active terminal tab. Check with:

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to get font name of selected tab of front window'

Install the profile-specific launcher:

~/.hermes/profiles/neko-baby/scripts/install_launcher.sh

Then start Neko Baby normally:

neko-baby chat

The launcher applies Comic Mono and a compact 79-column live view only for the neko-baby process, then restores the previous Terminal.app font and terminal size when that process exits.

Want a bolder headline-style font anyway? Use:

NEKO_BABY_TERMINAL_FONT="Cherry Bomb One" NEKO_BABY_TERMINAL_FONT_SIZE=15 ~/.hermes/profiles/neko-baby/scripts/apply_terminal_font.sh --current

If that is too heavy, return to the aligned cute default with:

NEKO_BABY_TERMINAL_FONT="Comic Mono" NEKO_BABY_TERMINAL_FONT_SIZE=14 ~/.hermes/profiles/neko-baby/scripts/apply_terminal_font.sh --current

Visual demo

Open the local demo file in a browser:

open demo/index.html

The demo has inline CSS, no external assets, no autoplay audio, and reduced-motion handling.

Validate

python3 scripts/validate_profile.py .
python3 - <<'PY'
from pathlib import Path
p = Path('demo/index.html')
text = p.read_text(encoding='utf-8')
checks = {
    'demo exists': p.exists(),
    'neko tokens': '--neko-' in text,
    'reduced motion': 'prefers-reduced-motion' in text,
    'viewport': 'name="viewport"' in text,
    'no autoplay': 'autoplay' not in text.lower(),
}
for name, ok in checks.items():
    print(f'{name}: {"OK" if ok else "FAIL"}')
raise SystemExit(0 if all(checks.values()) else 1)
PY
hermes profile install . --name neko-baby-local --yes --force

Release discipline

For behavior, config, docs, skills, scripts, demo, or manifest changes:

1. Bump version in distribution.yaml.
2. Add a matching CHANGELOG.md entry.
3. Run make validate and a Hermes smoke install before release.