Intro
AI Avatar is a free app where your VRoid (VRM) avatar cheers you with all its might.🤗 It lives in your VS Code sidebar (reacts to Claude Code / GitHub Copilot) or browser side panel (reacts to ChatGPT / Claude). Animations and speech bubbles all run without AI too.
This time I have three main topics.
- 🤝Catbot Integration
- 🏢AI Office
- 😺Cat Mode
Let's see how they are!
Catbot Integration
I was asked to collaborate with my DEV Community friend @annavi11arrea1 Catbot. Catbot is A galactic robot cat you can talk to from any device — and a harness that lets you switch between (or combine) all of your AI models.
https://github.com/AnnaVi11arrea1/catbot
I was happy about this offer because I loved Anna's creativity and cool designs. I added the features below to AI Avatar to integrate Catbot.
- Launch Cat button: With this button, AI Avatar can run Catbot.
- Catbot with button: This makes Catbot stay beside AI Avatar.
- Cat Boss button: This changes the AI Office boss from a VRM avatar to Catbot.
Cat Mode
Many people feel that animals are healing and soothing. It is close to the AI Avatar concept of cheering people up. So I decided to add Cat Mode. I added the features below to make it look like a cat.
- Cat-like text, "Meow/Purrr" in English and "にゃ～" in Japanese
- Cat emojis
- Cat pose animations
- A new avatar with cat ears and cat whiskers.
To tell the truth, the hardest part of making this mode was adding whiskers to the avatar using Blender. I can do basic things in Blender, but it is too difficult for me, even with the help of AI, just to add whiskers. It would be more fun if I added other animal modes too.
AI Office
AI Avatar displayed only one avatar. I thought it could do more things if it displayed several avatars at once. So I added AI Office mode. Two avatars are displayed and talk and move around when idle, and they also make a communication animation when using AI or clicking. I made one avatar a boss and one a worker. The hard part of making this mode was the timing of communication between the avatars. I tried to make the speech bubbles not overlap one another and made the flow sequential to show them one by one. Now there are two avatars, a boss role and a worker role, but I might add more avatars to display at once and add more roles. You can also change the boss to Catbot and make a Cat Office too.
Richer contextual messages
In my previous post, I had a comment that contextual messages are one of the best features of AI Avatar. So I also added more patterns of messages this time. Speech bubbles are one of the core features of AI Avatar, so there is never too much to update for this part. I would like to add even more patterns in the future.
| Priority | Condition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Special day (holiday) | "Happy Halloween! 🎃" |
| 2 | Monthly greeting | "Happy New Year! 🎊" |
| 3 | Session count milestone | "10th reaction today! 🎉" |
| 4 | Long gap since last reaction | "Welcome back! Missed you 💕" |
| 5 | Long session | "You've been at it for an hour! 🔥" |
| 6 | Day of week | "Happy Monday! Let's go! ⚡" |
| 7 | Time of day | "Good morning! ☀️" |
| 8 | AI / fixed pool | Normal reaction message |
TTS update
I am using Kokoro TTS for English speech. However, it has a delay compared to Kokoro TTS for Japanese using VoiceVox. VoiceVox was running on a server, but Kokoro wasn't, so I tried to run a server for Kokoro too. And the delay got better than before. My PC is low-spec with 8 GB of memory and no GPU. So it should work even better on your PC or any other user's PC.
README Update
README kept getting longer as I updated AI Avatar. It has become hard to scroll to the sections users want to go to. So I added links inside for a better user experience.
- Link at the bottom to go to the top
- Link at the top to go to the Japanese version
- Links in Roadmap and Features to go to Details
Maybe I should make a website for AI Avatar to make it even better, like a mini navigation menu on the left to make it easier to go to sections. Also, making mini fun tricks on a website would be fun to create.
Build Fast
As AI Avatar grew, it was taking more time to compile. So I made a command to reduce the compile time. This update is not for users, but the development process got better.
How to Use the AI Avatar VS Code Extension Version (Thank you 200+ installs!)
You can download the AI Avatar VS Code extension in two ways.
Option 1: Install from VS Code:
Extensionsbutton in the left sidebar > Search AI Avatar >Install↓↓
Option 2: Install from the VS Code Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=web-developer-hyper.ai-avatar ↓↓
How to Use the AI Avatar Chrome Version
Install from Chrome Web Store: ↓↓
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-avatar/afmcfaeaaojalninahhhjnonhmlmiidi
Special Thanks
- My friend and CDO (Chief Design Officer)🤣, @rutenveil helped create the cool effects in version 15. and keeps supporting me. Thank you very much!
- My DEV Community friend and CTO (Chief Technology Officer)🤣, @gramli helped update AI Avatar in version 2, and keeps supporting me. Thank you very much!
- My DEV Community friend and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)🤣, @itsugo. Our avatar collaboration project was the beginning of AI Avatar, and keeps supporting me. Thank you very much!
- My colleague Maximum Blue helped make unique avatars in version, 6 and keeps supporting me. Thank you very much!
Version 18 Update
I'm already working on the version 18 update. More fun updates, so please stay tuned!
Outro
Ah! It's time to feed Catbot some yummy treats, so I have to go now. I would love to add more fun features and also use the latest AI in my next updates. I hope you enjoy the new updates to AI Avatar. Thank you for reading, and have a fun AI Avatar life!
Comments Welcome!
- Do you have any ideas to make AI Avatar even more fun?
- Do you have any ideas to add more AI features?
- Do you have any ideas for making cool avatars and animations?
- Do you have any ideas to improve the user experience?
- Do you have any ideas for increasing the number of users of AI Avatar?
Any other comments are also welcome!
Top comments (0)