Buddy is born. First commit of a new standalone WordPress plugin —
the spiritual successor to the tamagotchi that once lived inside
A-WP-Notes v1.1.5 (gracefully retired). Rebuilt from scratch with
all the v3-discipline lessons baked in from day one.
PHASE A — pet exists
- Dashboard widget at WP Admin → Dashboard showing SVG character +
name + mood label + four stats bars.
- Dedicated admin page at WP Admin → Buddy → My Buddy (bigger view).
- About page with side-by-side intro + plain-prose cards (Logbook
About-page pattern carried forward).
- Settings page with name-rename form + Updates panel.
- Per-user state in user_meta key buddy_state (each WP admin gets
their own pet, no shared state).
- Inline SVG sprite renderer with three mood tones (happy/neutral/
sad) and three sizes (sm/md/lg). CSS keyframe animations: bobbing
+ periodic blinking. Zero image files.
- Self-hosted update checker wired up from commit 1, ported from
Logbook v3.3.5: /releases/latest with /tags?limit=1 fallback,
12h success cache / 1h negative cache. UI on Settings page.
- dashicons-pets admin-menu icon — literal paw-print, brand match.
ARCHITECTURE LOCKED FROM COMMIT 1
- Single-word brand name "Buddy" — no WP prefix, no future rebrand.
- Public GPL v2+ Gitea repo (ranger/a-buddy).
- Constants prefix BUDDY_*, function prefix buddy_*, text domain
buddy. Clean naming throughout — none of Logbook's wp-notes-*
historical-artifact baggage.
- Single H1 per admin page, no nested toggle boxes, no duplicate
sections — Tier-1 discipline carried forward from Logbook.
- All assets local (inline SVG, plain CSS), no third-party CDN,
no Gravatar-style external pings.
NOT IN THIS RELEASE (planned)
- Phase B — Feed/Play/Clean/Sleep interactions + cooldown timers.
- Phase C — WP-cron decay + "Buddy is hungry" dismissible notices
(port the persistent-dismissal pattern from Logbook).
- Phase D — Multiple species (dog, dragon, sprite), per-species
personality phrases.
- Phase E — Site-health hook: pet stats react to wp_get_site_health()
results. The killer feature.
- Phase F — Pro tier (€2.99 lifetime) with custom skins + multi-pet.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
