I Built a Haunted Digital Pet That Feeds on Git Commits (with Kiro)

#kiro #webdev #electron #hackathon

The Resurrection of the Tamagotchi 🥚💀

Remember digital pets? They were needy, pixelated, and died if you forgot them in your backpack.

For the Kiroween Hackathon, I decided to resurrect this concept—but for developers. Meet Necro-Pet: a desktop companion that feeds on your git commit history. If you code, it grows. If you stop, it turns into a ghost.

How I Built It (Solo)

Building a desktop app with React, Electron, and real-time system watchers is a lot for one person in a weekend. Here is how I used Kiro (an AI coding agent) to simulate a 3-person team.

1. The Architect: Spec-Driven Development 🏗️

Most AI code turns into spaghetti after 500 lines. To fix this, I used Specs.

I wrote a markdown file defining the "Game Logic" separately from the code:

Persistence: Linear health decay over 48 hours (so I don't die if I sleep).
Feeding: git commit = +20 Health.
Evolution: Level-based system (Egg -> Larva -> Beast).

Kiro read this spec and generated the Zustand store with perfect type safety. It was like having a senior engineer review my architecture before I wrote a line of code.

2. The "Crypt Keeper" Hook 🪝

I didn't want to manually input commits. I used a Kiro Agent Hook to watch my file system. When I commit code, Kiro analyzes the diff and writes a "medieval fantasy" log entry into the app.

Me: git commit -m "fix: resolve authentication bug"
Kiro Hook: "The necromancer hath repaired the fractures in the void..."

3. The Bridge: Real Weather via MCP ⛈️

This is my favorite feature. The pet lives in your world.

Using the Open-Meteo MCP (Model Context Protocol), the app checks your local weather.

Raining outside? It rains in the crypt.
Night time? The app goes dark and spooky.

Dev Hack: I didn't read the Open-Meteo docs. I just turned on the MCP and asked Kiro to "wire it up." Kiro inspected the live API response and wrote the TypeScript interfaces for me. ⚡️

🎨 The Vibe: "Windows 95 Haunted House"

I wanted it to look like software found on a cursed floppy disk from 1996.

I used Vibe Coding to generate the Tailwind config. I simply prompted: "Make it look like a haunted GameBoy screen. Dark greens, scanlines, and blood red accents."

The result? A UI that feels cohesive and creepy, without me manually picking hex codes.