Claude Buddy Picker

Find your perfect Claude Code companion — 100% client-side, zero API calls
Tested on Claude Code v2.1.90

What is /buddy?

Claude Code's /buddy command hatches a companion pet that lives beside your input box. Each pet has a species, rarity, eyes, hat, personality, and five stats (Debugging, Patience, Chaos, Wisdom, Snark). It's a small easter egg that adds character to your terminal sessions.

The catch: your buddy is deterministically assigned based on your account ID and a fixed salt string baked into the binary. There's no official way to reroll or swap — you get what you get.

This tool lets you preview every possible buddy for your account and choose one you actually like. It works by finding a replacement salt that produces your desired pet, then patching the single string in the Claude Code binary. No logic is changed — only the 15-character seed that determines your pet's traits.

Verified on Claude Code v2.1.90 (April 2026). The buddy system uses FNV-1a hashing with the 18 original species. Salt is a single occurrence in the binary (earlier versions had 3).

Disclaimer & Risks

1. Enter Your User ID

Run this in your terminal to get it:
node -e "const c=JSON.parse(require('fs').readFileSync(require('os').homedir()+'/.claude.json','utf-8'));console.log(c.oauthAccount?.accountUuid??c.userID??'not found')"
Privacy: Your ID stays in your browser. This page makes zero network requests — no server, no analytics, no cookies, no localStorage. All computation runs in a local Web Worker. (Verify: DevTools → Network tab. View source — single HTML, no external dependencies.)

2. Set Filters

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Your Current Buddy

How to Apply

Step 0 Find your User ID

Run the command at the top of this page and paste the result into the User ID field.

Step 1 Pick a buddy, then copy the Patch command

Click any card above — patch command appears at the bottom — click the copy icon.

Step 2 Run the patch command in your terminal

Creates a backup (.buddy-bak), replaces the salt, re-signs on macOS.

Step 3 (Optional) Rename your buddy

Copy the rename command. Replace NEW_NAME with your preferred name.

Step 4 Make it persistent

Claude Code restores the original binary on every launch. To keep your buddy, add an auto-patch line to your shell config (~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc). Replace YOUR_SALT with the salt from Step 1:

# Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc CLAUDE=$(which claude) && SALT="YOUR_SALT" grep -q "$SALT" "$CLAUDE" 2>/dev/null || node -e "const f=require('fs'),p=process.argv[1],s=process.argv[2];f.writeFileSync(p,Buffer.from(f.readFileSync(p).toString().replaceAll('friend-2026-401',s)))" "$CLAUDE" "$SALT" && [ "$(uname)" = "Darwin" ] && codesign --force --sign - "$CLAUDE" 2>/dev/null
Step 5 Restart Claude Code

Open a new terminal tab (so the shell config runs), then start Claude Code.

Restore Undo everything
CLAUDE=$(which claude) && cp "${CLAUDE}.buddy-bak" "$CLAUDE" && [ "$(uname)" = "Darwin" ] && codesign --force --sign - "$CLAUDE"; echo "Restored."

Or reinstall: npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code