monkeytui

README

monkeytui

A minimalist monkeytype-style typing test for your terminal.

Written in Go with Bubble Tea · adapts to your terminal's color theme.

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Features

• Three test modes — time (15/30/60/120s), words (10/25/50/100), and quote.
• Live feedback — per-character coloring, a smooth blinking caret, mistakes in red.
• Rich results — a braille WPM/raw graph (with error markers), accuracy, raw WPM, consistency, a character breakdown, and a colored replay of what you typed.
• Command palette — monkeytype-style: hit Tab/Esc to switch mode, time, word count or accent theme without touching the mouse.
• Theme-adaptive — all colors come from your terminal's own ANSI palette, so it looks at home in gruvbox, nord, dracula, solarized, or whatever you run.

Install

No Go toolchain required — the script downloads a prebuilt binary for your platform:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ricardojparram/monkeytui/main/install.sh | bash

Other ways to install

With Go:

go install github.com/ricardojparram/monkeytui@latest

Manual download: grab a binary from the latest release, chmod +x it, and move it onto your PATH. Verify with sha256sum -c checksums.txt.

OS	Arch	Asset
Linux	x86_64	monkeytui_linux_amd64
Linux	arm64	monkeytui_linux_arm64
macOS	Intel	monkeytui_darwin_amd64
macOS	Apple Silicon	monkeytui_darwin_arm64
Windows	x86_64	monkeytui_windows_amd64.exe

Update / uninstall

monkeytui update      # download and install the latest release
monkeytui uninstall   # remove the installed binary
monkeytui version     # print the installed version

Usage

monkeytui                          # default: 30s time mode, yellow accent
monkeytui -mode words -words 50
monkeytui -mode quote
monkeytui -mode time -time 60 -theme cyan
monkeytui -seed 42                 # reproducible word sequence

Flag	Default	Description
-mode	time	time, words, or quote
-time	30	seconds, for time mode
-words	25	word count, for words mode
-theme	yellow	accent: yellow green cyan magenta blue red
-seed	0	fixed RNG seed (0 = random)
-punctuation	false	mix in punctuation (time/words modes)
-numbers	false	mix in numbers (time/words modes)

History & settings

monkeytui remembers your last mode, duration, word count, theme, and punctuation/numbers toggles between runs (stored in your OS config dir, e.g. ~/.config/monkeytui/). Explicit flags always override the saved settings.

Every finished test is recorded; see a summary with:

monkeytui stats

The results screen shows new pb when you beat your best for the current mode.

Keys

Key	Action
any letter	type
Space	next word
Backspace	delete (steps into the previous word)
Tab / Esc	open the command palette
Enter (on results)	next test
Ctrl+C	quit

In the command palette: type to filter, ↑/↓ to move, Enter to apply, Esc to close. The palette includes toggles for punctuation and numbers word decoration.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/ricardojparram/monkeytui
cd monkeytui
go build -o monkeytui .
go test ./...

The demo GIF is generated from demo.tape with VHS: vhs demo.tape.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the workflow, project layout, and conventions.

Credits

Inspired by monkeytype by Miodec and contributors — the typing test that set the bar for feel and presentation. monkeytui is an independent reimplementation for the terminal and reproduces the experience, not the code.

Built on the wonderful Charm libraries — Bubble Tea and Lip Gloss — and ntcharts for the results graph.

License & attribution

monkeytui is licensed under the MIT License.

• This project contains no monkeytype source code. It is an original Go implementation; monkeytype itself is licensed GPL-3.0 and none of it is copied, linked, or distributed here.
• The bundled word list is a hand-authored set of common English words (word frequency is factual and not copyrightable). The quotes are short, attributed quotations.
• "monkeytype" is the name of that separate project. monkeytui is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to monkeytype; the name is a nod, used in the nominative sense ("a monkeytype-style test").

Documentation

Overview

monkeytui is a minimalist monkeytype-style typing test for the terminal.