Your Pokémon trains, battles, and collects new friends while you code. The extension runs in VS Code and rewards both manual and coding-agent edits. This project is forked from matthewkremer/pokemon-code.
Open Pocket in the activity bar to see your trainer, team, collection, inventory, and recent encounters. The status bar shows your active Pokémon and opponent. Gameplay runs automatically; you keep working.
- Actual code changes earn trainer XP and Pokémon XP. Cursor movement, opening files, and saving unchanged editor content do not earn rewards.
- Changes within a 3-second window form one edit batch. Each batch grants 8 trainer XP and 10 Pokémon XP, including multi-file agent patches.
- After 8 exploration batches, a wild Pokémon appears near your partner's level. Your team chooses its battle partner automatically.
- Encounter turns run every 2 seconds, even when coding pauses. Pokémon handle attacks and capture supplies without asking you to choose actions.
- Pokémon learn skills as they level up and choose their own moves based on type matchups and cooldowns. Stronger skills unlock at levels 5, 12, and 24. Your team automatically selects a suitable partner for each opponent.
- Pokémon evolve automatically, keeping their identity, level, and earned XP while updating their species, sprite, HP, types, and skills. Bulbasaur evolves at level 16 and Ivysaur at level 32. Evolution milestones appear in the encounter log.
- New species are weakened and collected automatically. Already-owned species are battled for XP. Pokémon choose balls and use Razzberries to improve capture odds.
- The team heals after encounters. Trainer level-ups, every tenth coding batch, and battle wins replenish Pokeballs.
A new journey starts with a level 5 Bulbasaur. Trainer and Pokémon levels cap at 100. Captured Pokémon have individual levels and XP, including duplicate species.
Evolution covers all 72 evolution paths within the original 151 Pokémon. Level evolutions use their normal thresholds. Stone and trade evolutions are simplified to automatic level 36 milestones; no items, trading, or choices are needed. Each Eevee automatically takes one of its three branches, determined by its individual identity. Eligible Pokémon already in your collection evolve on load, and eligible new catches evolve after capture. Wild opponents keep their species during an encounter.
Agent changes use the same rewards as human edits. Creating, editing, or deleting workspace code files counts even when those files are closed and no editor is active. The workspace must be open in running VS Code; agents working in a separate worktree need that worktree opened there.
Editor and file-watcher events are deduplicated by content. Related changes form one reward batch, and continuous agent streams keep earning XP. Dependencies, build output, caches, Git metadata, lockfiles, minified assets, binary files, and external files over 1 MiB are ignored. VS Code file-watcher exclusions also apply.
Defaults provide fully automatic gameplay. No configuration or gameplay decisions are needed.
| Setting | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
pokemonCode.enabled |
true |
Enable code rewards and automatic encounters. |
pokemonCode.trackExternalChanges |
true |
Include workspace changes from agents and tools. |
pokemonCode.encounterMode |
auto |
Weaken and collect new species; battle known ones. battle and catch optionally specialize this automatic behavior. |
pokemonCode.editsPerEncounter |
8 |
Exploration batches before an encounter. |
pokemonCode.activityCooldownMs |
3000 |
Code activity batching window. |
pokemonCode.turnIntervalMs |
2000 |
Time between automatic encounter turns. |
pokemonCode.excludedDirectories |
[] |
Additional directory names to ignore. |
pokemonCode.notifications |
false |
Informational milestones, with no decision prompts. |
pokemonCode.starter |
Bulbasaur |
Starter for a new journey; existing collections are kept. |
Progress and current encounters persist in VS Code extension storage across restarts and updates. The first run migrates the original dist/data/savefile.json collection and inventory. Progress is shared across workspaces in the same VS Code profile and is not synchronized across computers or separate extension hosts.
The Command Palette has Pokemon Code - Pokedex, Inventory, and Battle and Trainer commands. They open the relevant views. The Pokémon Code output channel records coding activity and milestones.
Requires Node.js 18 or later for tests and VS Code 1.73 or later for the extension.
npm install
npm run compile
npm run lint
npm test
npm run test:integrationPress F5 to launch the development host, open a code folder, and edit files. The integration command launches real VS Code with a temporary profile and workspace. Set VSCODE_EXECUTABLE for a custom installation path. The Launch Tests debug entry expects a disposable workspace.
Tests cover XP, evolution and save migration, automatic encounters, capture supplies, editor/save deduplication, agent edits to closed files, filters, timer cleanup, and real VS Code events.
Pokémon types, the type-effectiveness chart, evolution paths, and level thresholds are bundled from PokéAPI's dataset. Skill powers, unlock levels, learnsets, and stone/trade evolution milestones are simplified for this extension. Gameplay needs no network requests.