OVERVIEW
Summary
Kolkata — Bluekeys is a Monkeytype-grade typing-speed test and touch-typing course that runs entirely in the terminal — 15+ themes, four game modes, a 25-lesson curriculum, and a per-key error heatmap.
It ships cross-platform via Homebrew, npm, and a one-line shell installer, and it's built with React — just rendered to the terminal instead of the DOM.
01
Why I built it
Typing trainers live in the browser. That's fine — until you're a developer who lives in the terminal and doesn't want to open a tab just to warm up.
I wanted the Monkeytype experience — instant feedback, clean stats, good typography — without ever leaving the shell.
02
What it does
A speed test with 15+ themes, multi-language support, and four modes: time, words, code, and a CLI mode.
A structured touch-typing curriculum of 25 progressive lessons with a live keyboard-visualization engine, plus an error heatmap that turns each session into per-key analytics — so practice targets the keys you actually miss.
03
Under the hood
The interface is rendered with Ink, React's renderer for command-line apps, so the whole UI is components, state, and hooks — painted with ANSI escape codes instead of HTML.
Sessions persist locally, and distribution is genuinely cross-platform: a Homebrew formula, an npm package, and a shell script that covers everything else.
04
The outcome
A polished, installable dev tool that proves a UI framework's ideas travel: the same React mental model that builds a web app can build a fast, keyboard-first terminal experience — no browser required.