rhymepass 0.0.0.dev1

Generate memorable, rhyming passphrases with an interactive terminal picker.

rhymepass

Generate memorable, rhyming passphrases from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, with an interactive terminal picker.

The underground parade / an undelivered accolade / 38
My yearning tailor / its xenial whaler / 67
Those nimble amyloid / such gentle android / 16

Each passphrase is a rhyming couplet built from real English words, padded with light filler words, plus two random digits. Readable, pronounceable, easy to transcribe, and awkward to guess.

Install

From PyPI:

pip install rhymepass

With uv:

uv pip install rhymepass

Or as a development checkout:

git clone https://github.com/synmux/rhymepass.git
cd rhymepass
uv sync
uv run rhymepass

Requires Python 3.11 or newer. Clipboard copy works on macOS (via pbcopy), Linux (via wl-copy, xclip, or xsel — install one through your package manager if none are present), and Windows (via clip).

Usage

Two commands land the same tool on your $PATH:

• rhymepass - the canonical name.
• rp - a short alias.

In a terminal

rhymepass            # shows five passphrases in an interactive picker
rhymepass 10         # shows ten
rhymepass --help     # usage summary
rhymepass --version  # print the installed version

Use the arrow keys to highlight a passphrase, then press enter - the selected passphrase is copied to your clipboard and the tool exits.

Key	What it does
↑ / ↓	Move the highlight.
enter	Copy the highlighted passphrase and exit.
x	Toggle whether spaces are shown. The per-row character count reflects the displayed form, so toggling spaces off makes every count drop. The character limit, however, is always enforced against the spaced form, so toggling is safe.
l	Prompt for a character limit. 0 means no limit (the default); any positive value must be at least 9 characters. The batch regenerates so every passphrase fits under the new limit.
r	Regenerate the batch with the current settings.
esc / q	Exit without copying anything.

Under a tight character budget the picker first drops filler words from the rhyming couplet, then (below ~16 characters) falls back to a single-statement form like Half dally / 17. The " / NN" two-digit suffix is always preserved.

In a pipe

When stdout is not a TTY, rhymepass skips the picker and just prints one passphrase per line. The interactive Textual dependency is never imported on this path, so pipe invocations start fast and stay light.

rhymepass 3 | cat
# Anchor pool: 24,439 words
#
# Those nimble amyloid / such gentle android / 16
# Our bold missourian / some hopeful centurion / 84
# Any tactile contemn / much calm condemn / 84

As a library

from rhymepass import generate, build_anchor_pool, load_real_words

real_words = load_real_words()
pool = build_anchor_pool(real_words)

print(generate(pool, real_words))              # no length limit
print(generate(pool, real_words, limit=24))    # fit under 24 characters

load_real_words and build_anchor_pool are comparatively expensive; call them once per process and reuse the result for as many generate calls as you need.

How it works

Anchor words come from the intersection of two dictionaries:

• the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (via pronouncing) for phonetic rhymes and syllable counts,
• the GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English (via english-words) to exclude proper nouns, abbreviations, and obscure entries.

For every passphrase, rhymepass picks a random anchor, looks up phonetic rhymes, filters them through the same quality checks, and assembles two phrases by wrapping each anchor in zero, one, or two filler words drawn from a hand-curated list of determiners (the, some, every, …) and adjectives (nimble, radiant, zesty, …). A two-digit suffix (10–99) is appended to each passphrase.

All random choices use secrets rather than random, so the output is suitable for use as an actual passphrase - though you should still pair it with whatever additional entropy your threat model demands.

When a character limit is set, the generator descends through progressively shorter output forms for the same anchor before giving up and drawing a new one, so common limits (20–30 characters) succeed in a few attempts. See AGENTS.md for the exact descent strategy.

Dependencies

• pronouncing ≥ 0.3.0 - CMU Pronouncing Dictionary bindings.
• english-words ≥ 2.0.2 - GCIDE word set for filtering.
• textual ≥ 0.80 - terminal UI. Only imported on the interactive path.

See pyproject.toml for the exact pin set; the lock file covers transitive dependencies.

Limitations

• Clipboard requires a platform helper binary. macOS ships pbcopy out of the box and Windows ships clip since Vista, so both work without extra setup. On Linux you need one of wl-copy (from the wl-clipboard package, preferred on Wayland), xclip, or xsel. If none are available, the picker raises RuntimeError with a message naming the options; the generator itself (and the pipe/library paths) work without any clipboard tool.
• No history. Each run produces a fresh batch; nothing is persisted between invocations.

Contributing

For architecture, internal conventions, and the complete list of gotchas, see AGENTS.md. Run the test suite with:

uv sync --extra dev
uv run pytest

Bug reports, feature ideas, and pull requests are welcome at https://github.com/synmux/rhymepass.

Licence

MIT - see LICENSE.