The easter egg in the leaked source code is now live: Claude Code April Fools' activation/buddy, zero footprint

According to 1M AI News monitoring, Claude Code engineer Thariq Shihipar shared a /buddy command screenshot on X, displaying an ASCII snail named Huskle, accompanied by five RPG attributes: DEBUGGING, PATIENCE, CHAOS, WISDOM, SNARK. The interface hints "it'll chime in as you code," and clearly states "your buddy won't count toward your usage." Users can get its opinion by calling the pet's name, `/buddy pet` pet it, `/buddy off` turn it off.

This feature was discovered by the community in the leaked v2.1.88 source code yesterday. Several analysis repositories point out that the buddy/companion.ts in the source code implements a complete electronic pet system: 18 species divided into 5 rarities (common 60%, uncommon 25%, rare 10%, epic 4%, legendary 1%), species assigned to user IDs through a deterministic algorithm (the same user always has the same pet), with a shiny variant (1% probability, shiny legendary only one in ten thousand), 6 eye shapes, and 8 hat decorations. The source code's time gate shows April 1-7 as a "preview window," with an official launch in May. Anthropic clearly planned to release it as an April Fools' Day Easter egg, but the premature leak of the source code spoiled the surprise.