bisl-torah

Learn Torah while your coding agent runs.

While Claude Code (or any AI coding agent) is processing your prompt, a small popup opens beside your terminal with a piece of daily learning from Sefaria — a halacha, a mishnah, a piece of Tanya. When the agent finishes, the popup invites you to dismiss it. The time you would have spent watching a spinner becomes time spent learning.

The name plays on the Yiddish phrase "a bisl Torah" — "a little Torah." Instead of waiting time becoming bitul torah (Torah-study time wasted), it becomes a few moments of learning.

Install

cargo install bisl-torah

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the Releases page.

Windows: unsigned binary; SmartScreen may warn. Click "More info → Run anyway". macOS: unnotarized binary; run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/bisl-torah once.

Setup

bisl-torah init       # safely merges hooks into ~/.claude/settings.json
bisl-torah doctor     # validates the install

That's it. Open Claude Code, prompt it, and a popup appears.

To remove:

bisl-torah uninstall

How it works

bisl-torah init adds two hooks to your Claude Code settings:

• UserPromptSubmit → spawns a popup running the TUI
• Stop → tells the popup the agent finished (you press any key to dismiss)

The popup picks a host based on what's available:

Environment	Display strategy
Windows Terminal	wt -w 0 split-pane (attached side pane)
tmux session	tmux display-popup (floating popup)
Anywhere else	New OS console window (Windows: CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE; Unix: detached child)

Configuration

Defaults live in ~/.bisl-torah/config.toml (or %APPDATA%\bisl-torah\config.toml on Windows). init creates it.

# Sefaria daily-calendar categories to rotate through. Use ["*"] for all.
categories = ["Halakhah", "Mishnah", "Chasidut"]

# Layout: "auto" picks side-by-side when wide, stacked when narrow.
layout = "auto"

# Initial language pane: "both" | "hebrew" | "english"
default_lang = "both"

# Keep Hebrew vowel marks (nikud).
nikud = true

# Display host: "auto" | "wt-split" | "tmux-popup" | "new-console"
display = "auto"

Keybinds

Key	Action
q	Close popup
n	Next item (rotate within whitelist)
j / ↓	Scroll down
k / ↑	Scroll up
g / G	Jump to top / bottom
b	Show both Hebrew and English
h	Hebrew only
e	English only
v	Toggle Hebrew vowels (nikud) on/off
f	Toggle footnotes drawer

Hebrew display

Hebrew text is rendered using whichever font your terminal emulator is configured to use. Nikud (vowel marks) and te'amim (cantillation marks) are combining characters — they layer onto the base letter. If the marks look misaligned, fuzzy, or fall on the wrong letter, the most likely fix is the terminal font, not the app:

• Recommended fonts: SBL Hebrew, Ezra SIL, Taamey Frank CLM, Noto Sans Hebrew, Cardo.
• Windows Terminal: Settings → Profiles → Appearance → Font face.
• iTerm2 / Terminal.app: Profiles → Text → Font.
• VS Code integrated terminal: terminal.integrated.fontFamily in settings.

If your terminal still struggles, you can strip the nikud instead:

• In the viewer: press v to toggle vowels on/off.
• Persistent: set nikud = false in ~/.bisl-torah/config.toml.
• One-off: bisl-torah show --no-nikud (or --nikud to force on).

Diagnostics

bisl-torah doctor       # binary on PATH, hooks wired, Sefaria reachable, log tail
bisl-torah show         # render once to current terminal (debug)
bisl-torah --verbose ... # bumps log level to debug

Logs at ~/.bisl-torah/logs/bisl-torah.log (daily rotation, 7-day retention).

License

MIT.