A desktop pet is a small customization, but choosing one is surprisingly visual. A character that looks great as a still image can feel distracting when it loops beside your work. I maintain Best Codex Pets, a small gallery for browsing animated companions for the Codex desktop app before downloading a package.
This is an unofficial resource. It is not an OpenAI product, and the pets are desktop companions rather than a feature added to every terminal that runs the Codex CLI.
Start with the animation
The gallery has Featured, Popular, and Newest views. Each pet has a detail page with a browser preview and a ZIP download. The practical advantage is that you can look at the character in motion before putting files into your local pets directory.
Five current examples are CorgiByte, Mint Fox, Inkbyte, Ember Loop, and Glint. They range from a recognizable corgi silhouette to simpler fox, ink-drop, ember, and spark designs. I would start by comparing a detailed character with a minimal one: how much motion do you actually want beside a coding session?
The gallery is deliberately small. It is useful as a place to choose a companion, not as a claim that every available Codex pet has been collected or independently reviewed.
Install the package in the right place
The site's installation guide describes this workflow:
- Open a pet's detail page and download its ZIP.
- Inspect the archive before extracting it. A pet package should contain its manifest and spritesheet.
- Place the pet's folder under
~/.codex/pets/. - In the Codex desktop app, select the pet under Settings → Appearance → Pets, then use
/petto show it.
A typical directory looks like this:
~/.codex/pets/
└── chosen-pet/
├── pet.json
└── spritesheet.webp
Keep each companion in its own folder. If an archive adds an extra enclosing directory, check where the two files actually landed. Avoid overwriting a companion you already customized. If the appearance settings differ in your app version, check the app's current instructions before changing unrelated configuration.
Keep the asset license separate
A gallery being free to browse does not mean every image has the same license. The current catalog lists CorgiByte as MIT and several other entries as all-rights-reserved. Check the specific pet's attribution and terms before reusing artwork in another project or redistributing a modified package.
For everyday use, the workflow is simple: preview a few animations, choose one, inspect the package, and follow the installation steps. There is no need to run an unfamiliar shell installer just to browse a character.
You can browse the gallery or inspect the public project README. Feedback on confusing installation steps or preview behavior is welcome; those are more useful improvements than adding a long list of pets that are hard to tell apart.
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