As of like two days ago, there is indeed! Just pop into the options menu (the little cog at the bottom right of the sidebar) and you can jigger with the font and size! You can get it all the way up to something like this now:
I think you also imagined this. She does mention that she's there to fix something about Talon Rogue's computer, but she doesn't elaborate. Kaede's a little cagey about that stuff, for obvious reasons.
It ain't perfect, but you can usually get a general feel for the size of a ship based on the forward obs. deck's window size. Figure a person's maybe half as tall as one of the vents on the side there.
Compare to Kiro's giant leaf over here. Big enough for a Casstech to park inside it.
You do not recruit her; you give her a ride to civilization and then she strikes out on her own.
I ain't writing a whole new crewman for a little Halloween event :P
I think you may have imagined it, or be confusing Kaede and Syri. Syri not only is best dickdoge but has a lot of lines about her being your favorite pup, etc.
The Sidewinder only needs 1 specific crewman to operate (spoiler: it ain't you). Sans that it would probably (realistically) need like 10-20 people to fully crew, though I don't think we're going to have a "minimum crew" stat enforced.