Typing Tutor

What it is

A plugin for learning and improving touch typing. It teaches proper technique from the home row up, adapts to the exact keys you struggle with, and wraps it all in a light game layer (XP, levels, streaks, achievements). Everything runs locally on your machine — no AI, no internet, no cost, and nothing about your typing leaves the device.

Typing Tutor was formerly a built-in feature; it is now a self-contained marketplace plugin (the Foundry / RepoGuard model). Nothing about the practice experience changed — it just ships as an installable plugin instead of baked-in code.

Where to find it

Install Typing Tutor from the plugin marketplace like any other plugin. Once installed + enabled it appears as a row in the sidebar; click it to open. Its screens run in the plugin's own window: a left sidebar holds the controls (modes, Practice/Progress, settings, reset) and the practice area fills the panel beside it.

It is desktop-oriented — touch typing needs a physical keyboard, so on a touch-only device it shows a short "open this on desktop" note instead of the practice UI.

If you used the old built-in version, your progress carries over automatically: a one-time migration copies your saved profile + history into the plugin's own storage the first time the plugin is installed (see Under the hood).

How it behaves

The three modes

The sidebar switches between:

• Learn — for beginners. You start on the home row (a s d f j k l ;). An on-screen keyboard highlights the next key to press and tells you which finger to use. New keys are introduced only once you've mastered the ones you have, following a standard touch-typing order (home row → top row → bottom row). The very first time a new user opens Learn, a one-time "New to touch typing?" card offers three quick tips; it disappears after the first round or a "Got it" click and never returns.
• Drill — for people who already type and want to get faster. It uses real words drawn from a common-word list and quietly biases them toward the specific keys you're slowest or least accurate on.
• Challenge — a timed 60-second run. It scores you and tracks your personal best per mode.

A Practice / Progress switch (also in the sidebar) — "Progress" opens the stats view (below).

The typing experience

The practice text is shown character by character: dim for not-yet-typed, solid once typed correctly, red where you made a mistake, with a caret on the current character. A live readout shows your WPM, accuracy, and progress (and a countdown in Challenge). There's an optional on-screen keyboard and optional keypress/level-up sounds (both are toggles in the sidebar's Settings; sounds are off by default, generated on the fly — no downloaded audio).

When a round finishes you get a results card: WPM, accuracy, XP earned, any new keys you unlocked, a level-up banner, and any achievements — then Retry (same text) or Next (a fresh round).

The "intelligent" part

The tutor keeps a per-key model of how fast and accurately you type each character. A key is "mastered" once you've typed it enough times, quickly enough, with a low enough error rate. Practice text is weighted toward your weak keys, and in Learn mode the next key unlocks only when your current set is mastered. This is a purely local, deterministic algorithm — the same idea sites like keybr use — so it's instant, private, and works offline.

The game layer

• XP + levels — every round earns XP scaled by correct characters, accuracy, speed, and mode difficulty. Levels follow a smooth increasing curve (a small XP bar shows progress to the next).
• Daily streak — practice on consecutive calendar days to build a streak; miss a day and it resets.
• Achievements — unlockable badges like "First Steps", "Home Row Hero", the "30/50/80/100 WPM" club, "Flawless", streak milestones, "Full Keyboard", and "Marathon" (50 rounds).
• Personal bests — your best WPM and accuracy, per mode.

The Progress view

A read-only summary: a WPM-over-time line chart of recent rounds, a color-coded keyboard heatmap (greener keys are ones you type fast and accurately), your personal bests per mode, and the achievements grid (earned vs. locked). A Reset progress button at the bottom of the sidebar (with a confirm step) clears all progress; it can't be undone.

Privacy & cost

100% local. Your progress is saved in the plugin's own storage on your machine; nothing is sent anywhere and no AI/network calls are made, so it costs nothing to use.

Limitations (this version)

QWERTY only; a single local profile; no online/multiplayer leaderboards; no AI-generated practice; desktop-oriented.

For agents

Under the hood (for agents)

• Self-contained webview plugin — src/plugins/typing-tutor/. UI-only (no worker backend). The manifest declares two storage collections (typing_profile — a single JSON blob; typing_sessions — one row per round) and the storage permission only.
• Engine — webview/src/engine/: the pure, deterministic model (lesson-model, text-generator, scoring, gamification, profile / applyRound, rng, constants), copied from the old shared engine. It now runs IN the webview, so scoring is local — the plugin owns its own data; there is no separate main-process authority (and none is needed, since it is the user's own practice data). Pinned by engine.test.ts.
• Data + reset — webview/src/lib/persistence.ts reads/writes the plugin's collections through the bridge (window.AgentMC.db); the keystroke loop is useTypingSession.ts. Reset is a confirm-gated button in the plugin UI (the old agent-callable POST /typing-tutor/reset route was intentionally not carried over).
• Migration (continuity) — typing-tutor-collection-migration.ts carries a prior built-in user's host data into the plugin collections (verified by content), triggered by leftover host data and run post-install; wired by migrateTypingTutorBuiltin in plugin-update-service.ts. The plugin is marketplace-only (loader-excluded from the builtin tier). Publishing to the live marketplace is a separate operator step (SUBMISSION.md).
• Invariants — .claude/memory/contracts/typing-tutor-contract.md.

Related

Typing Tutor installs and updates like any other add-on, which Plugin Marketplace explains, and what a plugin is allowed to ask the host for is set out in Plugin Bridge Capabilities. If you are drilling keyboard skills for the app itself rather than for raw typing speed, Hotkey Training Mode is the sibling practice surface.