Spinlings

Tiny pixel creatures that battle above your prompt while Claude works.

Website · Install · How to play · What's new

Spinlings is a creature card game that lives inside Claude Code. While Claude works, wild creatures rustle into a slim band above the prompt and your team of three battles them. Win, and you might catch one. Every card is one of a kind, with its own look, genes and traits. You can fuse two cards into a hybrid nobody has seen before, trade, sell or gift cards to other players, challenge them to duels and climb the global leaderboards.

The world lives at spinlings.dev, or entirely on your machine if you play offline.

• Your team is ready. Start with three creatures and a random handle like soft-otter-42. A passkey brings your collection to another computer.
• Battles play themselves. Your creatures fight while Claude works. Press 1 when a special fires for a Perfect hit.
• Playable alone. Generated Rivals and a Wandering Trader fill in whenever no other player is around, so the game works on day one.
• Free. Nothing to buy, and cards have no cash value.
• Open source (MIT), mod and server.

Install

Two commands inside Claude Code, one at a time:

/plugin marketplace add 416rehman/spinlings
/plugin install spinlings@spinlings

Or just ask Claude: install the Spinlings mod from 416rehman/spinlings. From a shell, the same is:

claude plugin marketplace add 416rehman/spinlings
claude plugin install spinlings@spinlings

Requires Claude Code 2.1.287 or later. Run claude --version to check, or claude update to update the CLI. Restart Claude and start a new session after installing, then run /spin to open your team.

Launch gift: run /spin redeem FIRSTSPIN for one random pack. Redeem instructions and live availability.

The Code tab in Claude Desktop needs a bundled Claude Code version that supports mods too. Updating the CLI does not update Desktop's bundled version; update the desktop app if the mod is unavailable there.

Mods run with your permissions, so look before you install. This prints every hook the mod registers and every call it makes:

git clone --branch v0.2.16 https://github.com/416rehman/spinlings
claude plugin validate spinlings/plugin

First run. The mod joins spinlings.dev on its own. You get a starter team of three, two welcome packs and 100 sparks. The band says it once: ✦ A Spinling hatched!, with [1] Open your welcome pack. Then creatures find you while Claude works, and /spin opens your collection whenever you like.

Online or offline. You start in the online world, where you trade, duel and climb the boards with other players. /spin world opens a chooser; /spin world offline plays entirely on your machine, and /spin world online returns to spinlings.dev. Each world keeps its own collection, and switching never deletes anything. If the mod cannot reach the server on the first run, it starts you offline.

Your collection in a browser. Save a passkey from Community → Profile → Passkey & devices, then open your collection to sign in and see your cards, current stats and rankings. Search and filters cover your whole collection; sort by level, genes or combat stats to compare creatures. Hover, focus or tap a stat or trait for its effect. The mod's link appears when your server supports browser collections; older servers offer your public profile instead. You can choose a public username there. Opening packs, choosing a team and trading happen in Claude Code.

Your username. Keep your generated handle, or choose a unique public username in the browser: 1–40 ASCII letters, numbers, _ or -, saved in lowercase. Names pass the game's name filter, and names such as admin and support are reserved. Changes share the once-a-week limit; an old name stays unavailable for 30 days. Renaming keeps your account, collection and saved passkeys.

/spin quiet silences everything. To leave for good, delete your account from /spin privacy, then run claude plugin uninstall spinlings@spinlings.

Keeping your game. New seasons bring new species without reinstalling the mod. Cards from past seasons keep battling and trading, and season rewards arrive on your first visit after the season changes. The server supplies online card stats and frozen species data; old mod releases remain covered by compatibility tests. New screens, families or artwork shapes may need a mod update. New battle rules can play through the server's log when they fit the supported format. /spin version shows your installed version and server status; the pane offers an update when one is available. See what arrives without an update.

Optional: turn on updates in /plugin → Marketplaces → spinlings → Enable auto-update. Claude loads the new version in your next session; Anthropic's update guide has the details.

See it

A pack opening. One card waits face down. Every pack rolls freely, with no guaranteed rarity; a rare result glows before it flips.

Three stages. Each creature evolves at level 4 and again at level 8, and keeps its own look as it grows.

Every season. 36 new species, eight per family plus a legendary, and each one stays a shadow in your album until you meet it. Every card you find hatches with its own colours, genes and traits.

How it plays

Cards only arrive as moments

No command ever hands you a card. Commands open views, and every new card arrives through an event that builds up and then pays off.

Rarer results get longer build-ups. A rare silhouette has one bright twinkling pixel, an epic outline shimmers, and a legendary card glows gold before it flips.

While Claude works

Once Claude's main turn has run for 20 seconds, each further 15 seconds has a 30% chance that something rustles in the band, at most once every 8 minutes. Your first encounter comes at 20 seconds, and your first wild win always catches. Sometimes it is a duel against another player's saved team, or a Rival's, instead.

Battles and Claude never wait for each other. If Claude finishes first, the battle plays on in the band until it ends. Every round takes 2.2 seconds.

Your team fights on its own. When your special fires, the band shows [1] Now!. Press 1 during that round for a Perfect special at 1.3x power. Looking away costs nothing.

You never lose a card in battle. A card that faints is tired for 15 minutes, and your strongest rested card steps in for it. Every finished battle pays sparks and XP, and every wild win rolls a catch. There are no daily limits: the server only spaces battles out, with at least 8 minutes between wild encounters and 2 minutes between duels.

About 1 wild encounter in 40 is led by a Mythic: a creature generated on the spot that has never existed before and never will again. If it gets away, it is gone forever.

Legendary is the highest ordinary rarity. Mythics are rarer still: online, named visitors such as Dario, Marshmallow Menace, Noodle Knight and Soggy Emperor each have a single encounter in the whole world.

When Claude is idle