Make Coding Less Lonely: A Step‑by‑Step Guide to Enable and Customize Codex’s Desktop Pet

Enable built‑in desktop pet in Codex

Open Codex Settings (lower‑left button), select Appearance , scroll to the bottom, expand Pet . Eight default pets are listed. Choose one and click the top‑right Wake Pet button to place the pet on the desktop. The pet remains visible and shows status notifications when a task makes progress.

Create a custom pet with Hatch Pet Skill

Install the skill by sending the command:

安装 https://github.com/openai/skills/tree/main/skills/.curated/hatch-pet 这个 Skill

Then type hatch, select the installed Hatch Pet skill, and either describe the desired appearance or upload a reference image. Codex generates a main visual, then produces multiple pose images (failure, jump, crawl, wait, run, review, etc.). After roughly ten visual states are generated, Codex assembles and composites them into the final custom pet.

Return to the Appearance → Pet page, where the new pet appears alongside the built‑in options; select it to activate.

Technical details of the generation process

Codex dispatches several sub‑agents that run in parallel to create each pose.

Each pose image corresponds to a task state (e.g., “failure” shows a drooping lobster, “jump” shows a cute upward motion).

When all pose images are ready, Codex composites them into an animated sprite used by the desktop pet.

Alternative generic desktop‑pet tool

For users of OpenCode, Claude Code, or other AI coding assistants, the “Cyber Pet” tool Confirmo can be used. Download the appropriate installer from the GitHub releases page:

https://github.com/yetone/confirmo-releases

Select the installer matching the operating system and follow the same activation steps.