I Built a Haunted Digital Pet That Feeds on Git Commits (with Kiro)

Source: Dev.to

Remember digital pets? They were needy, pixelated, and died if you forgot them in your backpack.
For the Kiroween Hackathon I decided to resurrect this concept—for developers. Meet Necro‑Pet, a desktop companion that feeds on your Git commit history. Code, and it grows; stop, and it turns into a ghost.

Building the app

I built a desktop application with React, Electron, and real‑time system watchers—all in a weekend. To simulate a three‑person team I leveraged Kiro, an AI coding agent.

Defining the game logic with specs

Most AI‑generated code becomes spaghetti after a few hundred lines, so I wrote a separate markdown spec for the core mechanics:

Persistence: Linear health decay over 48 hours (so I don't die if I sleep).
Feeding: git commit = +20 Health.
Evolution: Level‑based system (Egg -> Larva -> Beast).

Kiro read this spec and generated a Zustand store with perfect type safety, essentially giving me a senior engineer’s architectural review before writing any code.

Automating commit detection

I didn’t want to manually input commits. Using a Kiro Agent Hook I watched the file system. When I commit code, Kiro analyzes the diff and writes a “medieval fantasy” log entry into the app.

git commit -m "fix: resolve authentication bug"

The necromancer hath repaired the fractures in the void...

This feature makes the pet feel like it lives in your world.

Weather‑aware ambience

With the Open‑Meteo MCP (Model Context Protocol) the app checks your local weather:

• Raining outside → it rains in the crypt.
• Night time → the app goes dark and spooky.

I didn’t read the Open‑Meteo docs; I simply turned on the MCP and asked Kiro to “wire it up.” Kiro inspected the live API response and wrote the necessary TypeScript interfaces for me. ⚡️

Haunted UI design

I wanted the look of software found on a cursed floppy disk from 1996. Using Vibe Coding, I generated a Tailwind config with the prompt:

“Make it look like a haunted GameBoy screen. Dark greens, scanlines, and blood‑red accents.”

The result is a UI that feels cohesive and creepy without manually picking hex codes.

Takeaway

If you struggle with maintaining your coding streak, maybe you just need a monster to keep you company.

GitHub Repo: Necro‑Pet on GitHub
Video Demo: Watch on YouTube

Happy Haunting! 🦇