Clawd

A cute pixel-art desktop pet for Windows. Inspired by Shimeji — a small crab named Clawd lives on your desktop, walks across your screen, climbs your application windows, and eats files you drag onto him (sending them safely to the Recycle Bin).

---

Showcase

Idle

Walking

Happy

Working

Sleeping

23 hand-crafted pixel-art animations — open the SVG files in src/assets/ to see them animate.

---

Features

• Always-on-top transparent pet — sits on your desktop without a window frame.
• Mouse interaction — click to make Clawd happy, drag to move him around, eyes follow your cursor when nearby.
• Window climbing (Shimeji-style) — Clawd walks up the sides of any open application window, walks along the top edge, then turns the corner and climbs back down.
• Screen edge climbing — climbs the left/right monitor edges and walks back across the top.
• File eater — drag any file/folder onto Clawd and it gets moved to the Recycle Bin (safe, recoverable).
• Auto-cycle idle states — Clawd randomly switches between walking, working, sleeping, etc. when idle.
• Multi-monitor + HiDPI aware — pet positions correctly across monitors with different DPI scaling (100%, 150%, 200%).
• Tray menu — Show / Hide / Force Sleep / Wake Up / Reset Position / Exit.
• Single instance — running Clawd a second time just focuses the existing one.

---

Install

Option 1 — Pre-built installer (easiest)

Grab the latest release from the Releases page and run one of:

File	Type	Size	Notes
clawd_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe	NSIS installer	~1.9 MB	Recommended
clawd_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi	MSI installer	~2.9 MB	For enterprise / silent install

Windows SmartScreen may warn the binary isn't signed — click More info → Run anyway.

Option 2 — Build from source

See Build from source below.

---

Usage

After install, Clawd appears as a floating crab near the bottom-right of your screen and as a tray icon in the system tray.

Action	Result
Click Clawd	Plays happy animation
Drag Clawd	Move him anywhere on screen
Drop file on Clawd	File moves to Recycle Bin (Clawd eats it!)
Right-click tray icon	Open menu (Show/Hide/Sleep/Reset/Exit)
Move cursor near Clawd	Eyes track your cursor
Leave Clawd alone	Auto-cycles through animations; sleeps after ~5 min idle
Walk into a window edge	Clawd climbs it, walks across the top, climbs down the other side

---

Build from source

Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
• Rust ≥ 1.77 (rustup default stable)
• Microsoft C++ Build Tools — required for linking on Windows
• WebView2 Runtime — pre-installed on Windows 11

Verify:

rustc --version    # 1.77 or newer
cargo --version

Clone & install Tauri CLI

git clone https://github.com/Hert4/clawd-window.git
cd clawd-window
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2.0" --locked

Run in dev mode

cargo tauri dev

First build takes ~5 minutes (compiling Tauri + dependencies). Subsequent runs are fast — Tauri auto-reloads on file changes.

Build a release installer

cargo tauri build

The build produces two installers in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/:

src-tauri/target/release/bundle/
├── msi/clawd_0.1.0_x64_en-US.msi      # MSI for enterprise / silent install
└── nsis/clawd_0.1.0_x64-setup.exe     # NSIS installer (recommended)

Both come with a multi-resolution icon (16/24/32/48/64/128/256) embedded in the .exe, so the Start Menu / Desktop shortcut shows Clawd at every DPI.

Regenerate icons (optional)

If you change src-tauri/icons/icon-source.png, regenerate all sizes + the .ico:

cargo tauri icon src-tauri/icons/icon-source.png

---

Project structure

clawd-window/
├── src/                              # Frontend (vanilla HTML/CSS/JS)
│   ├── index.html                    # <object> tag swaps SVG per state
│   ├── pet.js                        # State listener, drag/click, eye-tracking
│   ├── style.css                     # Transparent body, pixelated rendering
│   └── assets/                       # 23 hand-crafted SVG animations
│
├── src-tauri/                        # Backend (Rust)
│   ├── src/
│   │   ├── lib.rs                    # App entry, plugin setup, command registration
│   │   ├── main.rs                   # Binary entry
│   │   ├── state.rs                  # PetState enum + Arc<RwLock>
│   │   ├── pet_controller.rs         # Walking, climbing, gravity tick (60 Hz)
│   │   ├── window_tracker.rs         # Win32 EnumWindows polling
│   │   ├── file_eater.rs             # trash crate -> Recycle Bin
│   │   └── tray.rs                   # Tray icon + menu
│   ├── icons/                        # App icons (PNG + ICO + ICNS)
│   ├── Cargo.toml                    # Rust dependencies
│   └── tauri.conf.json               # Window/bundle config
│
└── assest/                           # Original SVG sources (kept for reference)

---

Tech stack

Layer	Tech
Window / runtime	Tauri 2.10 — Rust backend + WebView2 frontend
Backend language	Rust 2021
Frontend	Vanilla HTML/CSS/JS (no bundler)
Pet rendering	SVG with @keyframes CSS animations, swapped via <object data> to avoid CSS scope collisions
Win32 integration	windows-rs — EnumWindows, MonitorFromPoint, GetMonitorInfoW, DwmGetWindowAttribute
File deletion	trash — moves to Recycle Bin (recoverable)
Async runtime	tokio
State sync	parking_lot::RwLock wrapped in Arc

---

How the climbing logic works

Every 16 ms, the walker tick:

1. Reads pet's current position and the monitor's work area (MonitorFromPoint + GetMonitorInfoW, properly handling multi-DPI).
2. Detects which PetState it's in (Walking / Climbing / Falling / Idle / …).
3. Walking: moves pet horizontally; if pet's right edge touches the left edge of an open window, transitions to Climbing { hwnd, edge: Left } and applies gravity = false.
4. Climbing: moves pet vertically along the window's edge. When pet reaches the top, runs a 14-tick lateral interpolation (corner_turn) so the pet smoothly walks onto the top of the window, then transitions back to Walking along the top.
5. Window destroyed while climbing: pet falls back to the floor.
6. Gravity: when no edge/wall is grabbed, pet falls toward the nearest floor — either screen taskbar top, or the top of any window the pet is centered over.

All measurements use physical pixels from outer_size() so positioning stays correct when the pet crosses monitors with different DPI scaling.

---

License

This project is provided as-is. The Clawd character pixel-art SVGs in src/assets/ are the original work of the project author.

---

_{Made with Tauri · Rust · WebView2}