ShibaCat

A living 3D cat for your desktopShibaCat-Assistant

ShibaCat is a lightweight transparent companion with a real-time VRM avatar. It watches your active workspace, tracks your cursor across the screen, reacts with fluid expressions, chats in 10 languages, and runs approval-gated tasks.

Read the docsInstall via CLI
The ShibaCat mascot: a cream-and-orange shiba cat with happily closed eyes
  • Windows · Linux · macOS
  • Electron + Three.js + VRM
  • Local-First · Zero Telemetry
  • Lightweight Desktop Companion

A companion with personality and awareness

Everything below is implemented and verifiable in the codebase — no roadmap hand-waving.

Real-time VRM avatar

Custom shiba-cat 3D model rendered with Three.js and anime-style MToon shading, with spring-bone physics on the ears and tail plus 360° rotation.

Global gaze tracking

Smooth eye and head tracking that follows your cursor across the entire screen, complemented by autonomous blinks, glances, and micro-saccades across 18 blendshapes.

Workspace awareness

Local sensor infers foreground context — coding, terminal, building, video, music, gaming, or meetings — and adapts cat demeanor, posture, and energy.

Voice & Provider Gateway

Streaming STT and spoken TTS with automatic fallback chains (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, DeepSeek, Fish Audio, ElevenLabs, Deepgram) and barge-in interruption.

10 Languages (Full i18n)

Complete native localization for English, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Arabic across settings, chat, and reasoning fallback.

Wellness & Memory

25/5 Pomodoro break buddy, Do Not Disturb, quiet hours, blocked app rules, and private opt-in session memory with full export and clear controls.

Install via Terminal

Get ShibaCat running quickly on your system using a one-line terminal command.

Windows (PowerShell)

Run via PowerShell prompt:

> irm https://shibacat.dreenkadev.site/install.ps1 | iex

macOS & Linux

Run via terminal shell:

$ curl -fsSL https://shibacat.dreenkadev.site/install.sh | bash

Node.js / NPX CLI

Launch directly without pre-installation or install globally:

$ npx shibacat@latest init

It knows the difference between a build and a meeting

ShibaCat polls the active window on your machine — locally — and maps it to a behavior profile. Switch apps and the cat switches personality.

  • Coding & building — focused poses while you work, surprise when a build kicks off
  • Terminal work — alert posture for CLI sessions
  • Video & music — relaxed watching, head-bob energy for tunes
  • Chat & meetings — calm presence while you talk to humans
  • Gaming — excited, playful mood
  • Idle & away — sleepy cat, and a welcome-back greeting when you return

An agent mode that asks before it acts

ShibaCat can do more than react — it can run tasks on your PC. It is opt-in, tightly scoped, and every risky step needs your approval.

Scoped by default

File tools are locked to a workspace folder you choose. Path traversal, UNC network paths, protected system areas and symlink escapes are rejected before anything executes. Secrets found in file output are redacted automatically.

Approval-gated actions

Terminal commands are risk-classified. Anything above low risk pops an approval card on the cat — allow once, allow for the session, or deny. Critical operations always ask, every time.

Tools & MCP

Filesystem, terminal, a sandboxed browser window, web fetch/search, long-term memory, sub-agents — plus your own tools via MCP servers (stdio or HTTP).

Audited & bounded

Sessions are capped at 24 reasoning steps and 15 minutes, repeated identical tool calls are stopped automatically, and every tool execution is written to an audit trail.

Heads-up: agent mode is experimental. The full pipeline (tools, approvals, skills, MCP) is implemented and unit-tested, but it is currently driven through the developer interface — the polished end-user toggle is still on the workbench.

Local-first, no telemetry

  • Settings, memory and API keys live in a local SQLite database on your machine
  • API keys never leave your machine except to the AI provider you configured them for
  • Window titles are processed locally for workspace detection
  • No analytics, crash reporting or usage tracking of any kind
  • Browser URLs are discarded by the workspace sensor by design
  • Everything works without any API key — voice and chat simply stay off

Questions, honestly answered

Is ShibaCat free?

Yes, ShibaCat is an open project that you can install, build, and run locally on your own machine. It is designed to be self-hosted with zero subscription fees.

What operating systems are supported?

Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit) are fully supported with native window transparency, DPAPI credential encryption, and workspace sensors. Linux and macOS builds are experimental and support core avatar rendering, audio pipelines, and local reasoning.

Does it need an internet connection or API keys?

The avatar, 3D animations, eye tracking, local chat UI, and workspace awareness run 100% offline. Voice conversations (STT/TTS) and AI reasoning connect to third-party providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Groq, Deepgram, Fish Audio, ElevenLabs) using your own API keys. Without API keys, the avatar remains fully interactive with local lip-sync and procedural reactions.

What languages does ShibaCat support?

ShibaCat features a complete internationalization (i18n) system supporting 10 languages: English, Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia), Japanese (日本語), Korean (한국어), Simplified Chinese (简体中文), Spanish (Español), Portuguese (Português), French (Français), German (Deutsch), and Arabic (العربية). All settings, chat forms, and fallback reasoning responses adapt instantly.

Will it slow down my PC or spy on my screen?

No. ShibaCat is a lightweight transparent window running at 60 FPS that can sit in the tray, stay click-through, or be minimized. Workspace awareness operates locally by querying the active window title and never captures your screen, keystrokes, or browser URL history. There is zero analytics or telemetry.