Hebrew / English Typing Fix

A small set of background daemons for Windows and Linux that fix the two most annoying things that happen when you type in a mix of Hebrew and English:

1. Wrong keyboard layout. You wanted how are things but typed ctv, ukh, n,fbho (or the opposite direction). Press a hotkey and it is instantly converted by physical key position, using the standard Israeli SI-1452 layout.
2. Spelling and grammar mistakes — in both Hebrew and English. Press a hotkey and the last sentence is fixed in place, in its original language.

The rest (rewrite / summarize / expand into a prompt / optimize prompt) is English-only AI sugar on top. Hebrew input is intentionally skipped for those tools so you never end up with a surprise English translation of your Hebrew text.

Setup (Windows)

1. Clone and install

git clone https://github.com/silver3667/TypeFlip.git
cd TypeFlip/typing-assistant
pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Set your OpenAI key (optional — only needed for AI features)

Open a terminal as administrator and run:

setx OPENAI_API_KEY "your_key_here"

This sets it permanently. Restart your terminal for it to take effect.

3. Run it

Right-click typing-assistant\run_daemon.bat → Run as administrator.

Why admin? The keyboard library needs admin privileges on Windows to capture global hotkeys. Without it, hotkeys won't work.

4. Use it

1. Type or select some text in any app
2. Select the text (Ctrl+A or drag to highlight)
3. Press the hotkey (see table below)
4. The text is replaced in place

5. Auto-start on login (optional)

1. Press Win+R, type shell:startup, press Enter.
2. Right-click inside that folder → New → Shortcut.
3. Point the shortcut at typing-assistant\run_daemon.bat.
4. Right-click the new shortcut → Properties → Advanced → check Run as administrator → OK.
5. Done. It will start silently (with an admin prompt) every time you log in.

Hotkeys

Select text first, then press:

Shortcut	Action
Shift+F1	Fix keyboard layout (Hebrew ↔ English)
Shift+F2	Fix spelling / grammar (Hebrew and English)
Shift+F3	Rewrite text more professionally (EN only)
Shift+F4	Summarize text (EN only)
Shift+F5	Optimize text as an AI prompt (EN only)
Shift+F6	Expand idea into a full AI prompt (EN only)
Shift+F7	Humanize AI-sounding text (EN only)

(EN only) = English only. If you trigger these on Hebrew text, the daemon skips it and leaves your text alone.

What's in the repo

There are three independent daemons. Pick whichever fits your workflow — they don't need to run together.

Folder	Uses clipboard	AI	Best for
layout_fix/ (root)	Yes (Select All → Copy → Paste)	No	Fixing a whole field at once
layout-fix-daemon/	No (rolling keystroke buffer)	No	Fixing just what you typed
typing-assistant/	Yes (select → hotkey → replaced)	Yes (OpenAI)	Full experience: layout + spelling + AI tools

typing-assistant/ is the main one. The other two are simpler, dependency-light alternatives if you just want layout conversion and nothing else.

Spelling fix — how it stays in the right language

The typo corrector looks at the text first. If it's mostly Hebrew letters it uses a Hebrew prompt that explicitly says do not translate, return Hebrew. If it's mostly English it uses the English prompt. So שלןם עולם becomes שלום עולם, and helo wrld becomes hello world.

Layout mapping — SI-1452

Conversion is done by physical key position, not by transliteration. Example:

• Hebrew ים' (keys at positions h, o, w) → how
• English how → ים'
• Hebrew ctv ukh n,fbho → how are things

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Windows 10/11 or Linux (graphical session, not SSH)
• Administrator privileges (required for global hotkey capture)
• Dependencies: keyboard, pynput, pyperclip, openai
• OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable — only needed for the AI-powered tools (spelling fix, rewrite, summarize, expand, optimize, humanize)

Run the tests

# layout conversion tests (root)
pytest tests/ -v

# buffer-based daemon tests
pytest layout-fix-daemon/tests/ -v

# typing-assistant processor tests (needs OPENAI_API_KEY)
pytest typing-assistant/tests/ -v

Safety notes

• The daemons only send local keystrokes (backspace, typing, clipboard) to whichever window has focus. They don't capture, log, or upload your keystrokes anywhere.
• The typing-assistant buffer keeps the last 200 characters in memory only, and is wiped when the daemon exits. It is never written to disk.
• The AI features only run when you press the matching hotkey, and they only send the selected text to OpenAI.
• The daemon does not modify any system settings, registry entries, startup entries, or permissions. Autostart is opt-in via a shortcut you place yourself.

Troubleshooting

Hotkeys don't work inside terminals (Windows Terminal, PowerShell, cmd, Claude Code, etc.)

This is expected. The daemon grabs your selection by sending Ctrl+C, but in a terminal Ctrl+C means "cancel the running command" (SIGINT), not "copy". So Shift+F1/F2/etc. fired inside a terminal will either interrupt whatever's running, copy nothing, or copy a stale clipboard value — none of which is what you want.

The daemon is built for editable text in real apps: Notepad, Word, browsers, Slack, Discord, VS Code's editor pane, Outlook, anywhere with a real text field. If you need to fix something you typed in a terminal, paste it into Notepad first, run the hotkey there, then copy the result back.

PRs welcome: a clean fix would be to detect a terminal/console window via GetClassNameW on the foreground window and either fall back to Ctrl+Shift+C or refuse the hotkey with a clear log message instead of silently misbehaving.

Pressing a hotkey pastes the result twice

This almost always means two daemons are running — both register the same hotkey, both respond, both paste. The daemon will refuse to start a second instance and print ANOTHER DAEMON IS ALREADY RUNNING, but a leftover pythonw.exe from a previous logon session can slip past that check when the new daemon is started without administrator privileges.

Find the running daemons:

Get-CimInstance Win32_Process -Filter "Name='python.exe' OR Name='pythonw.exe'" |
  Select-Object ProcessId, Name, CommandLine, CreationDate

Kill the old one (replace <PID> with the older pythonw.exe):

taskkill /PID <PID> /F

Then start the daemon as administrator (right-click run_daemon.bat → Run as administrator) so the singleton lock is machine-wide and zombies can't hide from it.

The daemon also writes a log to ~/.typing-assistant/daemon.log — open it to see whether the duplicate paste came from one daemon firing twice (look at call IDs) or from two daemons each handling the same press.

Numbers turn into symbols (!@#$%…) and scrolling stops working

This means the Shift key is being captured globally. It was caused by an old bug where hotkeys were registered with suppress=True. This was fixed in commit 00ff08f.

If it happens to you:

1. Open Task Manager and kill all pythonw.exe / python.exe processes running the daemon.
2. Make sure you have the latest code (git pull).
3. Restart the daemon: double-click typing-assistant\run_daemon.bat.

For developers: never set suppress=True on keyboard.add_hotkey() for hotkeys that use a modifier key (Shift, Ctrl, Alt). The keyboard library will swallow that modifier globally, breaking normal typing.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.