Keystrike

Adaptive drills for your weakest keys — an offline terminal typing tutor inspired by keybr.com. Stats stay on your machine; nothing phones home. Design follows research-backed typing pedagogy.

Install: pipx install keystrike · PyPI · Discussions

What it does

Keystrike tracks how fast and accurately you type each key, unlocks new letters as you hit your targets, and generates practice text that overweight your current weak spot. Switch keyboard layouts (QWERTY, Dvorak, Colemak, Colemak Mod-DH, or your own TOML) and each layout keeps its own history.

Why it works

The adaptive engine applies principles from typing research and tools like Keybr — see the Typing pedagogy wiki for sources and how each maps to the code.

• Accuracy before speed — a new key unlocks only when every letter in your current set is fast and accurate; high speed with lots of errors does not advance you.
• Targets your weak keys — generated text overweight keys and bigrams you still miss, instead of generic full-alphabet drills.
• Home row first — unlock order follows keyboard rows (home → top → bottom), matching standard touch-typing curricula and reach-distance effects in keystroke timing.
• Word-level practice — Markov word chunks build sequence memory; skilled typing is controlled at the word and bigram level, not isolated letters.
• Spaced review — keys you have not practiced recently resurface in lessons before they fade.

Features

• Adaptive engine — row-weighted key unlock order, speed+accuracy confidence gates, Markov word drills with a guaranteed focus letter.
• Per-layout stats — heatmap with per-key confidence and urgency; WPM/accuracy trends; press a key on the heatmap for that key's history.
• Daily learn budget — optional cap on adaptive minutes per calendar day.
• Custom layouts — drop *.toml files into your config layouts directory; no restart needed.
• Git backup sync — optional CLI to push/pull settings and sessions to a private remote (union-merge sessions, last-write-wins settings).
• Offline by default — JSONL session logs and a local stats cache under platformdirs paths; sync is opt-in.

Install

Requires Python 3.12+ and a terminal with raw-mode keyboard input (Terminal setup).

pipx install keystrike    # or: uv tool install keystrike
keystrike                 # launch TUI (default)
keystrike --version

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/egno/keystrike
cd keystrike
uv sync --no-dev
uv run keystrike

Usage

Home

Key	Action
Enter	Start adaptive practice
s	Stats
o	Settings
l	Cycle layout
Ctrl+Q	Quit

On other screens, Esc / q goes back. Settings saves with Ctrl+S.

Practice

Adaptive mode disables backspace — mistakes stay in the record so confidence scores stay honest. The HUD shows live accuracy, remaining daily learn time, and the current focus key. When a session ends, the next lesson starts automatically unless you go back. Hitting your daily goal is shown in the HUD only — practice continues.

Stats

Recent sessions are listed below the heatmap. Press any key on the heatmap to drill into that key's confidence trend; Esc / q returns to the overview.

Settings

Setting	Default	Notes
Layout	qwerty	Any bundled or custom layout
Target speed	46 WPM	Or CPM — your unlock threshold
Letters unlocked up front	16	Force-unlocked before confidence gating
Daily learn goal	10 min	0 = no goal

Advanced confidence tuning (session window, min key/bigram attempts) is config-file only — edit settings.toml directly; see the Confidence tuning wiki.

Backup sync

Opt-in git sync for backing up or moving data between machines. Requires git on PATH and a private remote (sessions contain your typing history).

Not Keystrike cloud sync — only runs when you invoke keystrike sync. Background and FAQ: discussion #6.

keystrike sync init git@github.com:you/keystrike-backup.git   # one-time
keystrike sync push      # local → remote
keystrike sync pull      # remote → local (rebuilds stats cache)
keystrike sync status    # diff summary

Sync merges sessions by session_id (union), resolves settings by updated_at (last-write-wins), and copies layout files both ways. The stats cache is excluded — pull triggers a rebuild.

Data locations

Path	Contents
~/.config/keystrike/settings.toml	User settings
~/.config/keystrike/layouts/	Custom layout TOML files
~/.config/keystrike/sync.toml	Sync remote config (after sync init)
~/.local/share/keystrike/sessions/	Session JSONL logs (Linux)
~/Library/Application Support/keystrike/	Same on macOS

Windows uses %APPDATA% / %LOCALAPPDATA% equivalents via platformdirs.

Terminal setup

Keystrike captures every keystroke in raw mode via Textual.

Works out of the box in Terminal.app, iTerm2, and most Linux terminals.

Windows

Use Windows Terminal — the legacy conhost host has unreliable raw-mode support. Run keystrike inside WT, not cmd.exe. Raw mode is not verified on every Windows build; please open an issue if something breaks.

Development

uv sync                  # runtime + dev (pytest, pyright)
uv run pytest -q
uv run pyright
uv sync --all-groups      # + ruff + snapshot tests (desktop only)
uv run ruff check

Dependency groups: dev (default, pure Python — safe on Termux), lint (Ruff), snapshot (pytest-textual-snapshot). Keep native-wheel tools out of dev; see pyproject.toml for why.

Regenerate the demo GIF after UI snapshot changes:

uv sync --group snapshot
uv run pytest tests/presentation/test_snapshots.py --snapshot-update
uv pip install pillow cairosvg   # one-off; system cairo on macOS/Linux
uv run python scripts/generate_demo_gif.py

License

MIT