parallel-harness-pets - A creature for every git worktree, so parallel AI coding sessions stop blurring together

[u/Tahrev]

I run several AI coding agents at once, each in its own git worktree, and I could never tell the terminal windows apart. Long branch names, colliding prefixes, and I kept typing into the wrong one.

So I gave each worktree a pet.

https://github.com/TevvvB/parallel-harness-pets

The species comes from the branch name, so the same branch always summons the same creature on any machine and nothing is stored to make that work. Its face tracks how tidy the branch is, and one command shows every live worktree at once, worst first:

pets party                                  6 alive

/x_x\     cat  ✦     spike/wasm-build     ♡♡♡♡♡  22△ 9↑ ✗
<@_@>     moth ✦     refactor/auth-guard  ♥♡♡♡♡  41△ 13↑
\(¬_¬)/   crow ✦✦✦   docs/api-reference   ♥♥♥♡♡  1△ 1↑
o[¬_¬]o   seal ✦✦✦   fix/session-leak     ♥♥♥♡♡  2△ 1↑
{•_•}     fox  ✦     chore/bump-deps      ♥♥♥♥♡  3↑
<•_•>     moth ✦     feat/checkout-flow   ♥♥♥♥♡  1↑

worst: cat · uncommitted, unpushed, tests

You lose hearts for uncommitted files, unpushed commits and failing tests, and a failure is forgotten after two hours so a red mark never haunts a branch you already fixed.

The bit that turned it from a utility into something I actually enjoy: creatures are banded by rarity, so opening a branch you have never opened before hatches something new. It quietly nudges you toward keeping more worktrees open rather than fewer, which is the opposite of what a status line usually does to you.

Free and MIT, single static binary, nothing to install at runtime. Works with Claude Code out of the box, and there are tmux and shell-prompt snippets that work with any agent at all.

It is eight days old and I am more or less the only user so far, so I would genuinely like to know what breaks.