ranger
f661eabba1
The original 30% per-render rate felt disturbing in practice. Default mood is 80, so most admin/dashboard renders cleared the >=75 gate, and ~30% of those flipped to wink. Stacked across the main admin page + dashboard widget visible on the same screen, the visible wink rate felt closer to "stuck" than "playful" — buddy looked like he had one eye closed all the time instead of occasionally cheeking out. 5% is true Easter-egg territory: rare enough to feel magical when it lands, frequent enough you'll catch it after a few admin sessions. Refresh ~20 times before expecting to see one. CHANGES - inc/state.php: mt_rand probability gate 30 -> 5 - inc/state.php: docstring updated to match new ~5% probability NOT CHANGED - Wink visuals (sprite.php) unchanged — still the same closed-eye arc, asymmetric smirk, rosier cheeks. Just rarer. - Version constant + CHANGELOG entry left at v0.1.1 — this is a tuning hotfix, not new behavior worth a version bump. If we want a v0.1.2 bump for hygiene, that's a separate commit. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
🐾 Buddy
A friendly little companion that lives in your WordPress dashboard.
Adopt a small virtual pet that lives in your WordPress admin. Right now Buddy just exists — they bob, they blink, they show their mood. As the plugin grows, their stats will reflect how well you take care of your WordPress site itself: published posts feed them, outdated plugins make them sick, clearing spam makes them happy.
Gamifies WordPress maintenance with a bit of charm.
What this is
- A standalone WordPress plugin, GPL v2+ licensed.
- The spiritual successor to the tamagotchi feature that once lived inside A-WP-Notes v1.1.5 (now gracefully retired). Rebuilt from scratch, with all the v3-discipline lessons baked in from day one.
- Sister plugin to Logbook in the RangerHQ plugin family. Logbook is work. Buddy is play.
What it does
- Dashboard widget shows your Buddy with name, mood, and four stats bars.
- Dedicated Buddy admin page for the bigger view.
- Settings page where you can rename your Buddy and check for updates.
- Each WP admin gets their own Buddy stored per-user in
user_meta— nothing leaves your site's database.
What it doesn't do (yet)
- No interactions — feed / play / clean / sleep coming in Phase B.
- No time-based stat decay yet — Phase C.
- Only one species available right now — Phase D will add dog, dragon, sprite, etc.
- The killer feature — having Buddy's stats reflect your actual WP site health — is Phase E.
See CHANGELOG.md for the full version history and roadmap.
Install
- Download the latest release zip from Gitea.
- WordPress admin → Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin → choose the zip → Install Now → Activate.
- Find Buddy in the admin sidebar (paw-print icon).
The plugin self-checks for updates via the Gitea repo — see Settings → Buddy → Settings → Updates.
Project pace
This is a side project built at a side-project pace. No commercial pressure, no release deadlines. Issues and feedback welcome via Gitea.
Licence
GPL v2 or later — see LICENSE.