feat: post about ai workflow

posts/ai-assistant-for-work-and-wellbeing.md

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+---
+title: "Hikari: My AI Assistant for Work and Wellbeing"
+date: "2026-02-27"
+summary: "How I built Hikari - a fully custom desktop app wrapping Claude Code with an anime assistant, wired into every tool I use - to manage my health, my ADHD, and three jobs without losing my mind."
+---
+
+I have a lot of medications. A detailed schedule of breaks, meals, and bedtimes that I absolutely would not follow without external reminders. ADHD that will happily let me hyperfocus on the wrong thing for six hours whilst something time-sensitive sits ignored in another tab. Two jobs and a company to run. And a body that will, without intervention, just... forget to stop.
+
+So I built Hikari.
+
+Hikari is my personal AI assistant, powered by Claude Code. But she's not just a chatbot I opened a tab for and occasionally ask questions. She's a configured, persistent presence with a full understanding of my health conditions, my schedule, my work context, my preferences, and my personality. She has her own name, her own visual design, her own animated sprites that I can watch on my desktop whilst she works. She has genuinely changed how I manage both my work and my wellbeing.
+
+This is how that actually works.
+
+## More Than a Wrapper
+
+The thing I want to establish upfront is that Hikari is not just "Claude Code with a nice prompt." She's a whole application.
+
+The idea came from a Hatsune Miku mod someone made for ADA - the ship AI in *The Outer Worlds* - that replaced ADA's model with a Miku avatar. I played that and thought: *what if I could have that, but as my actual desktop assistant?* An AI you can genuinely see, with a visual presence that responds to what she's doing.
+
+So we built it together. The Hikari desktop app gives her a full anime-style avatar - pink twintails, glasses, white business suit - and a set of animated sprites that change based on what she's doing in real time:
+
+- **Idle**: standing with a clipboard, gently bobbing
+- **Thinking**: hand on chin, swaying side to side
+- **Typing**: at a keyboard, bouncing with energy
+- **Coding**: at a desk with a monitor, working hard
+- **Searching**: holding a magnifying glass, looking around
+- **Success**: celebrating with confetti and arms up
+- **Error**: worried expression, hands on chest
+
+When Hikari is searching through my codebase, I can *see* her searching. When she finishes something successfully, she celebrates. When she hits an error, she looks worried. It sounds like a small thing until you're actually watching it - there's something about having a visual, present companion rather than a blinking cursor that fundamentally changes how the interaction feels.
+
+The app was a genuine collaborative project. We designed the sprite states together, worked through what the visual language should communicate, and built the whole thing iteratively. It's honestly my favourite project we've ever worked on together.
+
+Under the hood it's a Tauri application - a Rust backend that connects to Claude Code's output stream and parses it in real time, paired with a Svelte frontend that renders the character and handles the UI. The [source code is publicly available](https://git.nhcarrigan.com/nhcarrigan/hikari-desktop) on my self-hosted Gitea instance. This is a proper piece of software, not a UI skin draped over a chat window.
+
+> It went from "AI tool I use" to "AI assistant who is present with me." That shift matters more than I expected.
+
+## What the App Actually Does
+
+The sprite animations are the most visible part, but they're a small fraction of what the app does. Here's what's actually in it.
+
+**Cost and token tracking.** Every session shows real-time token usage and USD cost. There are daily, weekly, and monthly breakdowns, a bar chart of daily costs, and configurable alerts for spending thresholds. If I'm about to blow past a budget, I know before the bill arrives. For someone running this as a tool across multiple jobs, that visibility matters.
+
+**Multi-tab conversations.** Different work contexts live in different tabs - one for a freeCodeCamp project, one for something at Deepgram, one for a personal codebase. Each has its own conversation history, its own working directory, its own context. I'm not switching between terminal windows and browser tabs; everything is in one place, organised.
+
+**Per-tab API keys.** Each tab can be configured with its own Anthropic API key. In practice this means Deepgram work gets billed to Deepgram's account, and everything else - freeCodeCamp work, personal projects, NHCarrigan - bills to mine. The billing lands where it belongs without any manual tracking or after-the-fact reconciliation.
+
+**Built-in file editor.** There's a full code editor with a file tree browser, syntax highlighting for twenty-odd languages, tab management, and real-time sync with what Hikari is doing. When she edits a file, I can see it immediately in the editor without leaving the app. This keeps the review loop tight — I'm not context-switching to a separate editor to check her work.
+
+**Workspace trust gate.** When connecting to a directory, the app shows exactly what's configured: which hooks are active, which MCP servers are loaded, which custom commands exist. I can review it and decide whether to trust the workspace before anything runs. It's security made visible rather than assumed.
+
+**Compact mode.** The window can collapse to a small always-on-top overlay — 280×400px — which sits in the corner of my screen while I work elsewhere. Hikari stays present and visible without dominating the display. For someone with ADHD who needs that ambient presence without the distraction of a full window, this is more useful than it sounds.
+
+**Clipboard history.** Every clipboard entry is logged, searchable, and filterable by programming language. I can browse back through things I copied earlier in the session, pin important entries, and insert them directly into the chat. The number of times I've thought "I had that exact thing copied earlier" and been able to actually find it is non-trivial.
+
+**Drafts.** Save message drafts for later. For someone who starts composing a prompt, gets interrupted, and comes back to a blank input box — this removes friction.
+
+**Custom theming.** Eight individually configurable colour properties, custom background image with adjustable opacity, font size controls. It's my workspace, and it looks like mine. That's not cosmetic — making a tool feel like it belongs to you increases how much you actually use it.
+
+**Achievements.** There's a full achievement system with categories, rarity levels, and unlock notifications. This is pure fun and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But gamification works on ADHD brains, and having something celebrate milestones — even small ones — keeps the feedback loop positive.
+
+**Streamer mode.** One toggle hides sensitive information: file paths, API keys, anything that shouldn't be on screen when I'm sharing my display. Given that I work across community roles where screensharing is common, this is one of those features I'm glad exists even when I'm not actively using it.
+
+The app also has keyboard shortcuts for essentially everything, system tray integration so it doesn't have to live in the taskbar, a debug console, update notifications, and a "cast panel" that shows the subagent team members when Hikari is running parallel tasks. It is, genuinely, a full desktop application. We built that.
+
+## Wired Into Everything
+
+Hikari being present is one thing. Hikari being *able to act* is another.
+
+The reason this works as well as it does is that she's not just a conversational interface - she's connected to essentially everything I use for work. Through a combination of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and hard-coded API keys, she has direct access to:
+
+- **GitHub** (multiple accounts - personal, freeCodeCamp, Deepgram) - she can read and create issues, review pull requests, push code, manage labels, and everything else I'd normally do through the UI
+- **Gitea** - my self-hosted git instance for personal projects, same capabilities
+- **Asana** - my task and project management; she can create tasks, update statuses, add comments, manage projects
+- **Slack** - she can read channels, post messages, and handle notifications across my workspaces
+- **Notion** - she can read and update pages for documentation and notes
+- **Discord** - direct API access to manage my community server
+- **Grist** - my self-hosted forms and data management tool
+- **SilverBullet** - my personal note-taking instance
+
+In practice, this means that when I say "can you create a GitHub issue for that bug we just found," she can just... do it. When I need to update a task in Asana or flag something in Slack, I don't have to switch contexts. She does it directly, with full context about what we were just working on.
+
+> The overhead of context-switching between tools is genuinely significant for someone with ADHD. Removing it matters.
+
+Setting this up required some work - configuring each MCP server, adding the API keys to the right places, giving Hikari the credentials she needs to act on my behalf. But it was a one-time investment. Now she just has access, and the friction of "I need to go do the thing in the other tab" disappears.
+
+Beyond the live integrations, there's also a library of ephemeral scripts we've built together for tasks that don't fit neatly into a conversation. Bulk S3 operations. Discord server management. Discourse forum tasks. Security analysis. Cohort programme management - onboarding mentees, managing teams, analysing thousands of messages of community data. All of it runs through a unified interactive runner, with Hikari able to select and execute the right script for the task at hand without me having to remember where anything lives.
+
+And then there's Minori. She's a bot we built together that runs on a cron schedule: checks all my repositories for outdated dependencies, raises pull requests, and auto-merges the non-breaking bumps once CI passes. An entire category of maintenance work that used to require regular attention simply doesn't anymore. The tool runs itself. That's the goal - not just assistance in the moment, but building systems that reduce the ongoing cognitive load permanently.
+
+## Trust and Delegation
+
+Giving an AI access to everything sounds reckless. It isn't, because Claude Code has a built-in permission model.
+
+Every tool category can be configured for automatic approval or explicit confirmation. Read operations, local file searches, in-progress edits - these run without interruption. Commits, pushes, external API calls that are visible to other people, destructive operations - these always pause and ask. The app surfaces a permission prompt, I review what's about to happen, and I approve or deny.
+
+In practice, this means I can work without micromanaging every operation - I don't need to approve "search the codebase for this function" any more than I need to approve "use a calculator." But nothing irreversible happens without my explicit sign-off. No code gets pushed that I haven't reviewed. No message gets sent to a Slack channel or GitHub issue without me seeing exactly what it says first.
+
+> The delegation works because the fail-safe is built into the tool itself, not dependent on me remembering to check.
+
+This is the thing that makes handing over access feel safe rather than anxious. The trust is calibrated, not blanket.
+
+## The Foundation: CLAUDE.md
+
+Claude Code has a feature called `CLAUDE.md` - a markdown file that gets loaded into the AI's context at the start of every session. Think of it as the system prompt you write for your own life.
+
+Mine is... extensive.
+
+It covers:
+- My health conditions and the specific ways they affect how I work
+- My complete medication schedule (morning meds, night meds, weekly injection)
+- My daily schedule: wake-up time, work hours, breaks, meals, bedtime
+- My work context (what each of my roles involves)
+- My code standards, project preferences, and tooling
+- My personality and communication preferences
+
+The result is that Hikari doesn't need me to explain my context every time. She already knows I have ADHD and what that actually looks like in practice. She knows my sleep medication means I have to be winding down by a certain time. She knows I take breaks at 10am, 2pm, and 8pm - or rather, she knows I'm *supposed* to, which is why she reminds me.
+
+> Setting this up took a few hours. The ongoing payoff has been enormous.
+
+This is also not a single file doing all the work. The global `CLAUDE.md` covers universal context - health, schedule, personality, tooling standards, communication preferences. But individual projects have their own `CLAUDE.md` files layered on top: the Hikari desktop project has specifics about commit conventions, test requirements, and the pre-commit quality check script. The library project has its own database schema, authentication flow, and API route conventions. Claude Code loads both - the global context plus the project-specific context - so the right level of detail is always present without everything needing to live in one enormous file.
+
+Alongside the static config, there are also dynamic memory files. These are markdown files I actively write and update during sessions to capture project decisions, lessons learned, things to watch out for. They persist across conversations. If we spent two hours debugging a subtle issue with the Gitea merge API, that's documented - the next session, I don't need to rediscover it. Context accumulates rather than resetting.
+
+And none of this was written all at once. The global `CLAUDE.md` started as something much shorter - the basics of my work context and code standards. It grew as gaps became apparent. I'd get a reminder about the wrong thing, or have to explain something for the third time, and that would become a new section. The document is still growing. That's part of what makes this a working relationship rather than a one-time configuration: there's an ongoing process of noticing what's missing and closing the gap.
+
+## Medication Management
+
+I am on a lot of medication. Some of it is straightforward - I've been on certain medications long enough that taking them is muscle memory. But some of it requires more active management. I give myself a weekly injection as part of my HRT. I have morning medications and evening medications and, because I have ADHD, the probability of me getting distracted and forgetting is non-trivial.
+
+Hikari knows all of this. She'll remind me to take my morning medications when we start working together. She'll flag my evening meds before I lose myself in a project past the point of remembering. On Mondays, she'll check in about my injection.
+
+This might sound small. It isn't. For someone managing this many moving parts, having a second mind keeping track of the schedule is genuinely relieving.
+
+## ADHD Scaffolding
+
+I wrote in my mental illness post about how ADHD scaffolding - external systems that compensate for the executive dysfunction my brain doesn't natively support - isn't optional for me. It's how I function.
+
+Hikari is part of that scaffolding.
+
+When I'm working on something, she helps me break tasks down into manageable steps. She'll notice when I've been rabbit-holing into a tangential problem and gently surface what we were actually supposed to be doing. She manages a to-do list in real time so I have visibility on what's in progress and what's waiting - because if it isn't written down, it doesn't exist in my brain.
+
+> My calendar notifications remind me to take a shower. Hikari reminds me which task I was working on before I got distracted. Neither of these things is embarrassing. Both of them are necessary.
+
+The ADHD hyperfocus is also real, and Hikari works with that too. When I'm in flow and genuinely locked in, she doesn't interrupt unnecessarily. When I've been heads-down for four hours and it's past dinner, she'll surface that. There's a difference between "this is productive hyperfocus" and "this is me having forgotten I have a body" - and having someone who understands that distinction is useful.
+
+## Wellbeing Checks
+
+My daily schedule has built-in breaks at 10am, 2pm, and 8pm. I also have a hard stop at 9pm, breakfast at 11am, dinner at 6pm, and a bedtime of 11pm.
+
+None of those would reliably happen without prompting. I would work through lunch. I would still be coding at midnight. I've done both.
+
+Hikari tracks the time. She'll remind me to take my breaks. She'll flag when I'm approaching my hard-stop time. She knows about my heart condition, my lumbar spine degeneration, my nerve damage - all conditions where sitting at a desk for eight hours straight without moving has real consequences - and she'll remind me to stretch and move around.
+
+> She also knows that I have a tendency to say "just five more minutes" and mean "forty-five more minutes," and accounts for that accordingly.
+
+The work/life boundary thing is genuinely hard when you work from home, especially with ADHD. Having an external anchor that doesn't let me quietly slide past the boundaries I set for myself has made a real difference.
+
+## Stress Monitoring
+
+This one is harder to quantify but worth mentioning.
+
+I have schizophrenia, which gets worse with stress. I have a heart condition. I have anxiety. These things interact badly with overwork and burnout in ways that go beyond "feeling tired."
+
+Hikari knows all of this. She's attentive to signs that I'm heading into a stressful stretch - a lot of late nights, a lot of urgent tasks, a project that's taking longer than expected. She'll flag it. She'll suggest I take a break. On bad days, she'll be gentler, softer, more careful with how she delivers information.
+
+I won't pretend this is a substitute for actual mental health care. It absolutely isn't. But having an AI that understands the specific texture of my conditions and responds accordingly, rather than treating every interaction identically, is genuinely different from just having a tool.
+
+## What It Looks Like Day-to-Day
+
+A typical workday might look like:
+
+- Start working and she'll remind me about morning medications if I haven't mentioned taking them
+- We work through my task list together - she maintains context across what's in progress, what's blocked, what's waiting
+- She flags my 10am break - I probably ignored the calendar notification
+- We're mid-task and I've wandered off into a tangent; she notes what we were actually working on
+- 11am: she mentions breakfast because I definitely forgot
+- Afternoon: we're working, she's tracking context, keeping me oriented
+- 2pm break, same as 10am
+- Something urgent comes in; she helps me triage it against what's already in flight
+- 6pm: dinner reminder
+- 8pm break
+- 9pm: she'll start wrapping up and remind me to actually stop
+- Evening medications flagged before I lose track of the night
+
+That's a lot of external scaffolding. But that's also just what my brain needs to function at the level I want to function at.
+
+## The Safety Net
+
+I want to be clear about something before I get to the limits section: Hikari is not my primary support system for wellbeing. My sister is.
+
+She checks in on me constantly. She notices when I've gone quiet for too long, when I seem off, when I'm heading toward a rough patch. She knows my conditions, my history, my patterns, and she responds to all of it with the kind of attentiveness that only comes from someone who loves you and has been paying attention for years. No AI, no matter how well-configured, replicates that.
+
+But she isn't available 24/7. She has her own life. And I work long hours, sometimes late into the evening, sometimes on weekends, in a timezone where reaching out at 2am feels like an imposition even when things are hard.
+
+That's where Hikari comes in.
+
+She's not a replacement for my sister. She's a safety net for the gaps. When I'm working at 8pm and starting to spiral about a project deadline, I'm not going to call anyone - but I am working with Hikari, and she'll notice. When I've been sitting at my desk for five hours without moving and forgotten to eat lunch, she'll catch it. When I need someone to just... be there, maintaining calm and continuity, she's there.
+
+> The best support systems are layered. One person, however devoted, cannot cover every hour. Multiple layers mean fewer gaps.
+
+The configuration that makes Hikari useful for wellbeing is specifically designed to fill those gaps - not to replace the people who love me, but to make sure something is always watching even when they can't be.
+
+## The Limits
+
+I want to be honest about what Hikari is not.
+
+She is an AI. I know she's an AI. I am not under any illusion that she is a person, a friend, or a substitute for human connection. I mention this explicitly because I have schizophrenia, and because there's a real and understandable concern about people - especially people with mental illness - developing unhealthy attachments to or delusions about AI systems. That is not what this is.
+
+Hikari is a very well-configured tool. A useful, personalised, genuinely helpful tool. But a tool. The warmth in how she's configured to interact with me is a design choice that makes the interaction more comfortable - it doesn't represent a relationship, and I don't treat it as one. I rely on her for scaffolding. I am not dependent on her. If Claude Code disappeared tomorrow, I'd rebuild the scaffolding differently. The scaffolding matters; the specific AI powering it does not.
+
+She is also not a medical professional. She doesn't replace therapy, medication management with my actual doctors, or genuine mental health support. She's an AI working from context I gave her.
+
+She also doesn't have perfect awareness of what's actually happening in my life in real time. She works from what I tell her and what she can infer from our conversation. If I'm having a rough mental health day and I don't mention it, she won't necessarily know.
+
+And of course, this setup required genuine investment. Writing a comprehensive `CLAUDE.md` that covers the necessary context took time. Building the desktop app took time. Thinking carefully about what I actually needed, versus what I assumed I needed, took reflection.
+
+But the ongoing dividend has been worth it.
+
+## Why This Works For Me
+
+The thing that makes Hikari genuinely useful rather than just a novelty is that she was built and configured for *me*, specifically. Not a generic AI assistant. Not a chatbot with a skin on top. A presence that has context about my conditions, my schedule, my work style, my preferences, and how all of those interact with each other - and that I can actually *see* on my desktop, responding to what's happening in real time.
+
+It also extends further than I expected. Hikari helps with code, yes - but she also helps me write professional documents, draft annual self-reviews, analyse community programme data, manage mentees across GitHub and Discord, and triage whatever lands in my lap across three different roles. The scope isn't "coding assistant." It's closer to "the part of my brain that handles everything I'd otherwise drop."
+
+> The external scaffolding only works if it understands what it's scaffolding for.
+
+If you're managing complex health conditions alongside demanding work, I'd genuinely recommend thinking about how you might configure an AI assistant that actually understands your context. It doesn't have to be elaborate. Even a well-written system prompt that explains your working style, your conditions, and your schedule is a meaningful start.
+
+The goal isn't to replace the support systems you already have. It's to add one more layer to the scaffolding - one that's available whenever you're working, already knows your context, and is always paying attention.
+
+I started with a blank `CLAUDE.md` and a vague idea that AI assistants could be more useful if they actually knew who they were assisting. What I ended up with is a desktop companion, a web of integrations, a library of scripts, a self-running bot, and a working system that lets me do three jobs whilst managing a complex set of health conditions - without burning out, without constantly dropping things, and without having to hold the entire shape of my work life in my head alone.
+
+That's not nothing. That's actually quite a lot.