User's Manual

CritterOS is a tiny operating system for your digital creature. Care for it daily and it will grow through six stages.

Stages

1. Booting → Initialized → Tiny → Young → Adult → Evolved

Care actions

• Feed (3 credits) — restores hunger and bond.
• Play (2 credits) — boosts happiness and bond; uses energy.
• Clean (2 credits) — sparkles up cleanliness and a bit of health.
• Rest (2 credits) — recovers energy.
• Heal (4 credits) — when health is low.
• Interact (0–3 credits) — choose a social action (kind, playful, silly, care, food, or mean). The critter reacts with an animation and a response.
• Travel — visit a new location. Some places are riskier than others and may make your critter unhappy.

Evolution

Transitions are slow on purpose: each evolved stage takes about 72–90 hours of healthy care, and a full Booting → Evolved journey takes at least 14 days. When your critter levels up, a short celebration animation plays on the home screen.

Your care pattern shapes the final evolved form: balanced care → Noble, lots of play → Playful, neglect-and-recovery → Resilient.

1. Getting started

1. Create an account from the Sign up screen.
2. Run the Boot Sequence to initialize your first critter and give it a name.
3. You'll land on the Home screen — the main habitat view.

2. The Home screen

Top-to-bottom layout, so the most-used controls sit close to your critter:

1. Critter ID card — name, stage, age.
2. Habitat panel — sprite and current location.
3. Primary actions (under the critter): Interact, Travel, Feed, Play, Clean.
4. Secondary actions: Rest, Heal, Stats.
5. Stat bars — Hunger, Happy, Energy, Clean, Health.
6. Daily Credits bar — your spending budget.
7. Daily Goals card — today's bonus goals and your weekly streak.

Tap the critter for a hop. Tap it rapidly and it will get annoyed and lose happiness.

3. Stats explained

• Hunger — drops over time; feed to top it up.
• Happiness — drops if ignored; play to raise it.
• Energy — used by play; rest to recover.
• Cleanliness — drops slowly; cleaning helps health too.
• Health — falls when other stats are critically low for long periods.
• Bond — grows with every positive interaction. Higher bond unlocks better evolved forms.

4. Growth and evolution

Your critter advances when it reaches an age threshold AND its stats meet that stage's gate. Each evolved transition takes 72–90 hours of healthy care, and a full journey takes 14+ days. Levelling up plays a short celebration animation.

Evolution at the final stage is decided by your care pattern:

• Noble — balanced, consistent care.
• Playful — lots of play and high happiness.
• Resilient — recovered from one or more neglect episodes.

5. Journal

The Journal tab logs every care event and lists Daily Goal definitions plus your 30-day bonus payout history.

6. Settings

• Username — shown at the top for reference (not editable).
• Notification mode — Off, Gentle, Normal, High, or Quiet (no push).
• Quiet hours — block notifications during a daily window.
• Timezone — quiet hours and time-based pings use your local time.
• Enable push on this device — required once per device/browser.
• Install CritterOS — add the app to your home screen (see below).
• Release critter — permanently removes your current critter so you can start over.

7. Notification variety

Pings come in three rarity tiers: common (everyday care nudges), uncommon (about 1 in 4 — moods like playful or restless), and rare (about 1 in 20 — special moments like dreaming, rainbow mood, or a cosmic event). Throttle and quiet hours always apply.

8. Offline mode

You can still view your critter and queue care actions when offline. Everything syncs the moment you're back online.

9. Support CritterOS

If you'd like to help keep the factory running, donate via Cash App or PayPal. Links are also in the footer.

Every day you receive 50 Daily Credits. They refill at the start of your local day; unspent credits do not roll over.

Bonus credits live in a separate Bonus pool that does not interact with the 50-credit daily cap. When you spend, the app drains Daily Credits first and falls back to Bonus credits automatically.

Daily Goal rewards

Caring well earns bonus credits the next day. Achieved goals pay out into your Bonus pool just after midnight (your local time).

• +5 — Happiness stayed above 30 all day.
• +5 — Hunger never dropped below 50 all day.
• +5 — No neglect events all day.
• +10 — All five stats stayed above 50 all day.
• +25 — Weekly capstone: at least one daily goal met for 7 days in a row.

The Daily Goals card on the Home screen shows live progress. The Journal page lists definitions and a 30-day history of bonus payouts.

CritterOS is a Progressive Web App. You can pin it to your home screen on both Android and iOS — no app store required.

Android (Chrome / Edge)

1. Open CritterOS in Chrome (or Edge) on your Android phone.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu in the top-right corner.
3. Tap Install app (or Add to Home screen).
4. Confirm Install. The CritterOS icon appears on your home screen.

iPhone & iPad (Safari)

1. Open CritterOS in Safari (the built-in browser). Chrome on iOS will not work for installing.
2. Tap the Share button (the square with an upward arrow) at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen.
4. Edit the name if you like, then tap Add in the top-right.

After installing

• Open CritterOS from your home screen — it runs full-screen, like a native app.
• Go to Settings → Enable push on this device to get notifications.
• iOS only delivers push notifications to PWAs installed via Add to Home Screen, so this step is required there.