chordgen

Turn any keyboard into a chording-enabled device — and learn the chords with built-in spaced repetition.

We type letter by letter, which is slow and error-prone. Stenographers type 300+ wpm by chording (pressing several keys at once for a whole word) but the learning curve is brutal. chordgen splits the difference: it picks an optimal chord for each word in your vocabulary, generates firmware files for your keyboard, and trains you on the chords with a spaced-repetition TUI.

It supports standard keyboards and directional ones such as Harite, CharaChorder, and Svalboard.

Highlights

• Optimised per layout. Chord scoring takes your specific keyboard geometry into account.
• Inflection-aware. Each base word's chord automatically covers its plural / past-tense / -ing form via alt-slot modifiers.
• Spaced-repetition learning. chordgen learn graduates chords using FSRS so you only review what you're about to forget.
• Real-text drilling. chordgen drill is a speed test for words you've already learned, and chordgen book lets you practise on arbitrary prose.
• Firmware export. Writes ready-to-flash files for QMK, ZMK, Kanata, and CharaChorder, plus a training file for typing tutors.

Quickstart

pip install chordgen
chordgen setup     # downloads SUBTLEX-US, writes ~/.config/chordgen/
chordgen gen       # picks an optimal chord per word and fills in alts
chordgen output    # writes firmware files + training.txt
chordgen learn     # interactive spaced-repetition TUI
chordgen drill     # speed-drill TUI for chords you've already learned
chordgen book      # practise on long-form prose

Edit ~/.config/chordgen/chords.csv (remove words you don't want, pin chords by hand, etc.) and re-run gen whenever you want to refresh.

Documentation

Full docs live at https://dlip.github.io/chordgen/ — including the chording approach, the chords.csv reference, output formats, the config schema, and the development guide.