Progress Quest

An RPG overlay for Claude Code. Earn XP, level up, fight enemies, collect loot, unlock achievements, and more.

Every tool call Claude makes — reads, writes, edits, bash commands — earns you XP. Level up from Just a Baby to God Mode: Retired to Substack. Unlock a tool-specific class. Fight named enemies. Collect loot drops. Meet NPCs. Get roasted by git-aware events. Prestige and do it all again with new titles (up to 5 unique prestige tiers).

Install

One-liner

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cjalbanese/progress-quest/main/install.sh | bash

As a Claude Code plugin

claude plugin install /path/to/progress-quest

Requirements

• Claude Code CLI
• jq (brew install jq / apt install jq)

What you'll see

Most tool calls show nothing (scarcity keeps it fun). But sometimes:

Read earned 5 XP (45/100) | Lvl 1 Just a Baby [Read Monk]

  _     _______     _______ _       _   _ ____  _
 | |   | ____\ \   / / ____| |     | | | |  _ \| |
 | |   |  _|  \ \ / /|  _| | |     | | | | |_) | |
 | |___| |___  \ V / | |___| |___  | |_| |  __/|_|
 |_____|_____|  \_/  |_____|_____|   \___/|_|   (_)
LEVEL UP! You are now a Lvl 3 Copy-Paste Artisan!

    /|
   / |
  /  |
 /   |
/    |
\    |
 \   |
  \__|__
   |    |
   |____|
     ||
     ||
     ||
    /__\
ENEMY ENCOUNTER: A Wild Deadlock Demon (Lvl 4) attacks! You take 15 damage! (exit code 1)

LOOT DROP: 'Left Pad' (Artifact, Mythic). +50 XP. You hold the power of the entire npm ecosystem.

NPC ENCOUNTER: The CTO drops in. 'What if we rewrote everything in Rust?' Everyone nods. Nothing happens.

GIT SENSE TINGLING: You have 14 uncommitted changes. The code gods grow restless.

/quest — Character Sheet

Check your progress anytime with the /quest slash command (when installed as a plugin) or by running:

bash ~/.claude/hooks/quest-status.sh

Shows your level, XP bar, tool class, inventory, achievements, kill count, and session stats.

Levels

Level	Title	XP
1	Just a Baby	0
2	Stack Overflower	100
3	Copy-Paste Artisan	300
4	Senior Junior Dev	600
5	YAML Engineer	1000
6	Principal Yak Shaver	1500
7	Distinguished Prompt Whisperer	2100
8	10x Developer (Mythical)	2800
9	CTO of a Deprecated Startup	3600
10	God Mode: Retired to Substack	5000

Hit Level 10 and you prestige — reset to Level 1 with a 1.5x XP multiplier and a new set of titles. There are 5 unique prestige tiers with increasingly absurd titles, from "Ctrl+C Ctrl+V Grandmaster" to "Has Achieved Sentience, Refuses To Deploy On Friday".

Tool Classes

Once 50%+ of your tool uses come from a single tool, you earn a class title shown alongside your level:

Tool	Class
Bash	Bash Barbarian
Read	Read Monk
Edit	Edit Surgeon
Write	Write Necromancer
Grep	Grep Oracle
Glob	Glob Ranger
Agent	Agent Summoner
WebFetch	WebFetch Warlock
WebSearch	WebSearch Diviner

XP per tool

Tool	XP
Read	5
Glob	5
Grep	10
WebFetch	10
WebSearch	10
Edit	15
Bash	20
Write	25
Agent	30

Enemy Encounters

Failed Bash commands spawn randomized enemies from a bestiary of 15 creatures:

Wild Segfault, Null Pointer Phantom, Race Condition Wraith, Stack Overflow Slime, Deadlock Demon, Memory Leak Ooze, Off-By-One Ogre, Syntax Error Sprite, Dependency Hell Hound, Timezone Troll, Floating Point Phantom, Callback Hell Hydra, Zombie Process, Cache Invalidation Specter, Heisenbug

Each has a random level (1-5) and deals 5-20 damage. Defeat 10 for the Monster Hunter achievement; defeat 50 for Exterminator.

Boss Fights

• OOM Killer — exit code 137: -50 XP
• The Flaky Test Hydra — 3+ consecutive failures: -30 XP
• Command Not Found Specter — exit code 126/127: -20 XP
• Git Merge Conflict Golem — exit code 128: -35 XP
• The Infinite Loop Worm — timeout (exit code 124): -25 XP
• The Gatekeeper — permission denied: -15 XP

Boss fights include ASCII art.

NPC Encounters

~3% chance per tool call. Meet the cast:

• The Tech Lead — wants you to "just make it more robust"
• The Product Manager — 2 pixels bigger, top priority
• The Staff Engineer — distributed systems implications
• The QA Tester — have you tested in IE11?
• The DevOps Engineer — hollow eyes, Slack buzzing
• The Scrum Master — timeboxed to 2 minutes, it's been 47
• The Intern — asks a question you can't answer
• The CTO — what if we rewrote everything in Rust?
• The Recruiter — flee for cardio XP
• The Security Engineer — staring at your .env file
• The Junior Dev — pushing to main on Fridays?
• The Designer — "small changes" to a completely different mockup

Git-Aware Events

~3% chance. Reads your actual git state:

• Uncommitted changes count ("the code gods grow restless")
• Working on main/master ("living dangerously")
• Last commit age ("you were a different person")
• High commit count repos ("it has seen terrible things")
• Stash count ("they whisper from the shadows")
• Long branch names ("that's not a branch, that's a novella")
• Untracked file count ("they belong to no branch")
• Bad commit messages ("future you will not forgive this")

Events

• First Blood — bonus XP for your first Bash command
• Precision Strike — tiny edits (< 5 characters changed) earn bonus XP
• The Holy Trinity — Grep > Read > Edit in sequence: +40 XP
• The Debugger — Bash > Read > Edit > Bash: +60 XP
• Combo x5 — same tool 5 times in a row: +50 XP
• Write-Only Developer — 5+ consecutive Writes with 0 Reads: +20 XP
• Multi-File Refactor — 3+ Edits across files detected
• Scholar Mode — 5+ Reads with no edits: -5 XP penalty
• Side Quest — writing test files earns bonus XP
• Random flavor — 25 possible random events (~8% chance)
• Mega rare events — 5 legendary events (~0.5% chance)
• Seasonal events — Friday afternoon, Monday morning

Loot Drops

~5% chance per tool call. Loot is stored in your inventory (visible via /quest).

Item	Rarity	XP
The Renamed Variable	Legendary	+15
The Mass-Protected Branch	Epic	+20
Socks With Sandals of Agility	Uncommon	+10
The Unnested Ternary	Legendary	+25
A Reviewed PR From 2022	Cursed	-5
Left Pad	Artifact, Mythic	+50
An Unresolved Merge Conflict	Cursed	-10
The .env File of Secrets	Forbidden	+30
node_modules/	Bag of Holding	+5
The Correctly Configured ESLint	Mythic	+40

Achievements

Persistent across sessions. Unlocked once, shown once.

Achievement	Trigger	Description
First Blood	First Bash command	"There's no going back."
Architect	Create 10+ files in one session	"You're building an empire."
Rubber Duck	Read 15 files without changing any	"Impressive restraint."
Scope Creep	Touch files in 8+ directories	"The PR review will be legendary."
Sisyphus	Same command fails 3 times	"Pushed the same boulder 3 times."
Speed Run	Hit Level 5 in under 50 tool calls	"Gotta go fast."
Refactorer's Remorse	Edit the same file 10 times	"It's not getting better, is it?"
Rage Quit	5 failed commands in a row	"Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
Night Owl	Code between 2-5 AM	"Go to bed."
Ghost Writer	Write 10 files without reading any	"Bold strategy."
Archaeologist	Read a file of 1000+ lines	"Carbon dating says... 2021."
One-Liner	Bash command over 200 characters	"That's not a command, that's a novel."
Overkill	Replace 500+ characters in one edit	"You could have just rewritten the file."
Prestige Addict	Prestige 3 times	"You know this doesn't go on your resume, right?"
Monster Hunter	Defeat 10 enemies	"The bugs fear you now."
Exterminator	Defeat 50 enemies	"You don't fix bugs. You hunt them."

Sound Effects

Terminal bell (\a) plays on level-ups, boss fights, deaths, achievements, loot drops, and prestige events. Sound is on by default. To toggle, edit ~/.progress-quest/session-state.json and set "sound": false.

Death

If your XP drops to 0 from a boss fight or cursed loot:

    _____
   /     \
  | () () |
   \  ^  /
    |||||
    |||||
YOU DIED. Your code was collected by garbage collection. Respawning at 0 XP...

Data

• Session state: ~/.progress-quest/session-state.json (resets on new session)
• Achievements: ~/.progress-quest/achievements.json (persistent forever)

Uninstall

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cjalbanese/progress-quest/main/uninstall.sh | bash

To also remove your achievement history:

rm -rf ~/.progress-quest

License

MIT