The Codex Pet Timeline: From Launch to Today

Codex pet launch: what the first version shipped

Ask five people when Codex pets arrived and you get five answers, which is roughly the problem. Codex pet history has no single launch date. What exists instead is a stack of small releases, each one changing a single file or a single folder. This page puts them in order: the first pet.json that went around the community, the codex pet launch of the generator itself, and the version running on desktops today.

One caveat on sourcing. The pet feature never shipped release notes of its own, so the dates below come from three places: the generator changelog at /changelog, the Codex desktop release notes, and a community thread where people pasted the contents of their pets folder to compare. Where two of them disagree, I have said so.

• Mid July 2026: the first pet.json example circulates in the community forum
• 2026-07-27: generator v1.0.0 ships photo to pixel pet conversion
• Nine animation states have been in the format since day one
• Transparent WebP output, so a pet sits on any background

Codex pet versions from v1.0.0 to v2.1.0

Four releases are recorded in the changelog, and only two of them changed anything a pet owner touches. v1.5.0 was entirely site plumbing: FAQ schema on articles, English titles on blog and guide pages, internal linking. Useful, invisible.

v2.0.0 added the hamster template, clipboard paste for uploads, the /changelog page, and blog category filtering. v2.1.0 added the tortoise template, a service worker so the site works offline, share buttons on posts, and blog category navigation. That is the whole codex pets evolution on the tooling side.

The full table lives at /changelog. It is the only list I trust for dates, mostly because it gets edited within a day of a release while the forum thread does not.

• v1.0.0, 2026-07-27: conversion, nine states, WebP output, macOS and Windows
• v1.5.0, 2026-08-20: article schema, English page titles, internal links
• v2.0.0, 2026-08-25: hamster template, clipboard paste, /changelog page
• v2.1.0, 2026-08-29: tortoise template, offline support, share buttons

Codex pets evolution inside the folder

Here is the part that surprises people. Across all four releases the folder contract barely moved. The spritesheet is still 1536 by 1872 pixels laid out as eight columns and nine rows, and every cell measures 192 by 208 pixels. Nine rows, nine animation states, same order since July.

What grew is everything around it. Export went from one size to two, with 4K doubling the linear resolution to 3072 by 3744, four times the pixel count on an unchanged grid. Custom palettes arrived later and stayed an Unlimited feature. The template list picked up hamster and tortoise without dropping anything.

• Grid, row order and frame count have never changed
• 4K export quadruples the pixel count and leaves the grid alone
• Custom palettes came later and remain an Unlimited feature
• Templates were added, never replaced

Where the timeline leaves you in late 2026

Install today and you get v2.1.0 behaviour: nine states, two export sizes, clipboard paste, and the site works offline. The install walkthrough has not changed since July and it is at /blog/how-to-install-codex-pet.

The one lesson worth taking from codex pet history is where pets live. Every report of a pet vanishing after a desktop update traces back to that folder, and the pet itself is sitting on disk the whole time. Copy it back, quit the app fully, relaunch. The longer troubleshooting path is at /blog/installation-troubleshooting, and the backup habit that survives updates is at /blog/backup-codex-pets-guide.

• Pets live in the pets folder, nowhere else
• A missing pet usually means a moved lookup path
• Keep the backup outside the app directory and updates stop being scary
• Nine states and the grid have been stable the entire time

About Codex Pet Generator

Codex Pet Generator (codexpetgenerator.com) turns one photo into a pixel companion that runs on your desktop. Start at the homepage / to upload a photo, compare the Pro and Unlimited tiers on /pricing, and read the rest of the archive at /blog.