The Hatchery Field Guide
Bookworm, idle

Playing idle · at actual size · frame timing approximate

Plate I·Bookworm

Bookworm

A guileless green explorer who wriggles toward every good story.

Plate · bookwormThe Hatchery Field Guide
Bookworm
specimen bookworm · runtime Codex, sprite v2
Sheet1536 × 2288, webp, alpha
Cell192 × 208 in an 8 × 11 grid
Plates73 frames in 11 rows
Digestsha256 2586fbfa…9bff714c
TravelsCodex
Field notes
A guileless green explorer who wriggles toward every good story.
Condition: Passed: OpenAI's atlas validator (rows 0–8) and the frame checks, 20 October 2026.

Adopt · free

Take Bookworm home

Codex

  1. Download bookworm.zip (1736 KB).
  2. Unzip it into Codex's pets folder:
mkdir -p ~/.codex/pets && unzip bookworm.zip -d ~/.codex/pets/

Then choose Bookworm in Codex under Settings → Appearance → Pets.

Petdex

Submitted to Petdex on 2026-10-22, awaiting listing. When it is listed, the install command will appear here. Until then, the Codex download works on its own.

The Hatchery Record

How Bookworm was made

What was drawn, what was generated, what was changed, and what was checked. The Record as data.

DesignerBen Amuwo
Original designMockups made partly by hand and partly with GPT. Ben starts from a general anatomical silhouette. Bookworm is the mascot of bookworm.guide.
AI-assisted productionGPT 5.6 Sol, in ChatGPT. From the silhouette, GPT 5.6 Sol builds the model, rigs it and builds out the animations, guided by the Hatchery seed prompt. Seed prompt: v1 (the Hatchery seed prompt is now at v3.4).
Manual refinement
  • 2026-10-19: review row frame 5 replaced with frame 0 (frame selection; deterministic; workbench/2026-10-19_repair)
  • 2026-10-20: waving and jumping rows repaired by Ben, following the 19 October regeneration briefs
  • Bookworm has reached the standard set for release; no further repairs are planned
RightsBookworm is the mascot of bookworm.guide, which belongs to the designer. Licence: Bookworm can be used freely as a pet, including at work, but cannot be replicated or resold commercially in any way.
Designed by the named designer. Portions were produced with AI assistance, disclosed above. This Record makes no claim that AI-generated portions are protected by copyright.
Checks
  • Format: OpenAI atlas validator, rows 0-8: pass (2026-10-20)
  • Frames: clipping, chroma residue, size outliers, detached bits: clean (2026-10-20)
Releasev1.0, measured 2026-10-20
Spritesheetfile sha256 2586fbfa40f97edf8995b7f08333469cfcc2a5b8680b2bd66319be3a9bff714c
decoded RGBA v1 5774c0e6820885647a2a0bb72a2ebc0bee034d1c0ab1c54cdca8199441287ee6
Downloadbookworm.zip sha256 e71dbee7417150d8d96dda311375bbfc0501105c65027813e3ee3e4b40ab503f

Case study

From a brand's mascot to a CLI Companion

Bookworm is the mascot of bookworm.guide, a free, community-mapped guide to the Little Free Libraries of British Columbia. The guide treats readers as a cornerstone species and the little libraries as a living network; the mascot carries that idea in hand-crafted features that gives it the kit of a wanderer who goes looking for stories.

I began, as I usually do, with a general anatomical silhouette, made partly by hand and partly with GPT. GPT 5.6 Sol, guided by the Hatchery seed prompt, then built the model, rigged it and animated it through every state a coding-agent pet must perform. The constraints were more creative than they were aesthetic: a worm has no arms, so its greeting comes from the tail, and I had to come up with ways to show emotions in Bookworm that spoke to its personality.

The released sheet passes OpenAI's atlas validator and a frame-level check for clipping, colour residue and stray pixels, and its Record states what was drawn, what was generated and what was changed. It's important to keep in mind that Bookworm is my own brand.