Asciimoji

A familiar face for every thread

Recognize your workspace’s conversations with small text faces like ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ and (⌐■_■). Each thread starts with a stable generated face in its header, so returning feels familiar across sessions.

Make it yours

Click the face to open a focused four-tab picker (Presets, Characters, Custom, Saved) with 12 named presets and a single compact preview. Choose a favorite, write your own custom asciimoji, or use Surprise me for a different preset. Every thread automatically gets a stable generated face. Automatic children in the same generated family share their parent's actual eyes across generations. Use automatic face removes a saved thread override.

Choose a generated face family: Classic, Bears, Robots, Cats, or Minimal. Precedence is Thread override → Project override → Global default. Set Project default in the picker to style a project's automatic faces, or choose Use global default to inherit the global Default face family. Thread family selections, presets, and custom faces are saved overrides. New generated faces use version-3 characters with paired eyes and an accessory; previously saved version-1 faces migrate without changing visible text, and version-2 snapshots keep their glyphs.

Choices are saved in bb and sync between connected windows. Each visible thread has its own control, including in split views. Custom faces allow up to 40 Unicode code points on one line. The editor previews drafts, counts characters, and rejects invisible faces. Sidebar faces also open the picker when the header is hidden.

Display and animation

In Settings → Plugins → Asciimoji, toggle the header face and optionally show faces beside threads in the sidebar. Sidebar faces are off by default and follow your saved choices without changing titles. Sidebar width is Compact, Standard, or Expanded; long faces truncate with full text in tooltips.

Enable Use theme accent color to color faces with your theme’s primary color in the header, picker, and sidebar. This optional setting is off by default and follows theme changes automatically.

Choose Off, Subtle, or Playful animation. Subtle adds a small entrance and hover wave on working threads; Playful adds a gentle bob while working. Idle, waiting, and error faces stay still. System reduced-motion preferences disable these animations. Changes to settings take effect immediately.

Enable Show activity state to see running, waiting, and error feedback. With Expressions, generated faces change eyes and custom faces use saved expressions with marker fallback; with Markers, faces keep static text plus a marker (·, ?, !). An Appearance preview shows all states and truncation without changing settings. Activity is on by default and follows BB's reported state.

Shell controls

Use bb asciimoji get, set '<face>', shuffle, generate --family bear, vary, favorite, library --json, project-default robot, project-default inherit, and reset. Optional set --running, --waiting, and --error flags save custom expressions. Commands target the current thread, with an optional --thread for another conversation and --json for structured output.

Requirements

Requires bb 0.45+ and Plugin SDK 0.6.15+. The plugin uses the experimental thread-header and app-overlay slots, plus a content script that decorates bb’s thread rows. No external service, account, or API key is needed. Faces do not change conversation titles or agent prompts.

Reuse favorites

Try another variation saves a different face in the current family, with trait locks and a draft gallery; select a preview and Save to pin it. Keep a family saves an override; Use automatic face tracks future defaults.

Save text preserves reusable text and expressions; Save character preserves the generated identity and activity behavior. The library holds 50 favorites and the 20 most recent choices, syncs across windows, and persists across reloads.