termtype

Adaptive touch-typing practice in the terminal. termtype ports the learning engine of keybr.com to Rust and runs it as a TUI.

termtype was vibe coded with Claude: most of the code was written by Claude under my direction.

• Guided lessons. You start with six letters. The next letter unlocks once every unlocked key reaches your target speed. Each lesson focuses on your weakest key.
• Text. Lessons use real words that fit the unlocked letters, with keybr's phonetic pseudo-words filling in when there aren't enough.
• Retype drill. Optional. A mistake stops the cursor, and the missed word must then be typed cleanly N times (default 10) before you move on.
• Key stats. Per-key speed and progress, a QWERTY heatmap, and your slowest key transitions (bigrams) across recent lessons.
• Transition drills. Press t in the menu for lessons built around your 3 slowest letter-to-letter transitions over the last 50 lessons. Words take turns drilling each pair. A pair needs 10 typings before it counts. Targets are recomputed every lesson, so a pair drops off once it gets faster. Press g to return to guided lessons.
• Bigram drills. Press b in the menu to type every letter pair that is still below your target speed on its own, 5 times each, slowest first (rl rl rl rl rl ea ea …, up to 12 pairs). Unlocks after 10 lessons, so there is enough history to judge your transitions.
• Mode panel. The menu lists the three modes, marks the current one (it sticks across lessons) and previews the pairs each drill would target.
• Clear progress. The last setting deletes your lesson history after a confirmation. The old history is moved to results.jsonl.bak until the next clear.
• On-screen keyboard. Boxed keys below the lesson light up as you type them (red for a wrong key). Standard row-staggered layout by default; also split (columnar ergo halves) or off. It hides itself when the terminal is too small.
• Themes. TOML files with hex colours. Built-ins: terminal (uses your terminal's palette), gruvbox, catppuccin-mocha, nord.

Screenshots

The menu after a lesson, with the mode panel:

A bigram drill, typing each slow pair 5 times, with the split keyboard:

Key stats (k), with per-key progress and the slowest transitions:

Clearing progress asks first:

The screenshots are rendered from the real UI with simulated typing: cargo run --example screenshots regenerates them (needs rsvg-convert).

Usage

cargo install --git https://github.com/jfwerbes/termtype --tag v0.0.1
termtype

On Arch Linux, build the package from packaging/aur/:

git clone https://github.com/jfwerbes/termtype && cd termtype/packaging/aur
makepkg -si

Where	Keys
Typing	esc menu · tab new lesson · ctrl-w / ctrl-backspace delete word · ctrl-c quit
Menu	enter next lesson · g guided · t transition drills · b bigram drills · k key stats · s settings · q quit
Settings	↑↓ / j k select · ←→ / h l / enter change · g / G first / last · esc back · on Clear progress: y confirm, n / esc cancel

Files

File	Purpose
~/.config/termtype/config.toml	settings (also editable in the app)
~/.config/termtype/themes/<name>.toml	your themes
~/.local/share/termtype/results.jsonl	lesson history, one JSON object per line
~/.local/share/termtype/results.jsonl.bak	the history from before the last Clear progress

Per-key statistics are always recomputed from the history, so the history is the only state that matters.

config.toml

All keys are optional, and unknown keys are reported as errors.

theme = "terminal"
keyboard = "standard"  # standard, split or off

[lesson]
target_wpm = 35        # a key is learned at this speed
alphabet_size = 0.0    # 0..1: share of locked letters to unlock up front
recover_keys = false   # judge keys by current speed, not best-ever
natural_words = true   # real words when enough fit the unlocked letters
length = 0.0           # 0..1: 100..200 characters
repeat_words = 1       # type each word this many times

[input]
stop_on_error = true
forgive_errors = true      # recover from a skipped/extra key
space_skips_words = false

[drill]
enabled = false
repeat_count = 10

Themes

A theme sets any of these slots. Slots you leave out come from base (default terminal).

base = "gruvbox"

[colors]
background = "#282828"  # or "default" for the terminal background
text       = "#ebdbb2"  # not typed yet
typed      = "#928374"  # typed correctly
error      = "#fb4934"  # mistakes
cursor_fg  = "#282828"
cursor_bg  = "#fabd2f"
accent     = "#83a598"  # headings, focused key
muted      = "#665c54"  # hints, locked keys
good       = "#b8bb26"  # keys at target speed
bad        = "#fb4934"  # keys below target speed

Colours can be #rrggbb, #rgb, ANSI names (red, bright-blue, …) or default.

How it relates to keybr

src/engine/ is a translation of keybr's TypeScript, and its tests reuse keybr's test vectors. It covers keybr's text input (error forgiveness, space-skip), histograms, exponential-moving-average key stats, the guided lesson's unlock/focus rules and the order-4 phonetic Markov model. termtype differs from keybr in these ways:

• Random numbers. keybr seeds lessons with an LCG whose float multiply loses precision, so it cycles after about 10k values (220 for some seeds). termtype keeps that LCG only for test vectors and uses a proper PRNG for lessons.
• Bigram timings. termtype also records transition (bigram) timings with each result. keybr's algorithm doesn't use them; termtype shows them as "slowest transitions" and builds transition and bigram drills from them.
• Retype drill. This is termtype's own feature.

Not yet ported: capitals and punctuation in lessons, learning-rate prediction, layouts other than QWERTY, and languages other than English.

Acknowledgements

• keybr.com by Aliaksandr Radzivanovich, for the learning engine and assets (see above and NOTICE).
• tukai by hlsxx, a terminal typing app that influenced termtype.

License

AGPL-3.0, the same license as keybr.com, from which the algorithms and assets/ (phonetic model, word list, blacklist) come. See NOTICE.