The interactive app

Run polyglots with nothing after it and it opens a full-screen app in your terminal window. Everything polyglots does is there: reviewing a submission, translating a file, fetching from translate.wordpress.org, statistics, and all of the settings. You move with the arrow keys and enter, and every screen lists its own keys at the bottom. If you would rather type commands, or want to script the work, see Getting started: every screen has a command behind it.

The window needs to be at least 60 columns wide and 20 rows tall. At 80 by 24 or larger the home screen shows its cards in a grid; smaller, it shows a list. A window that is too small says so until you make it bigger, and a run in progress carries on underneath.

The first run

On a fresh install the app opens on the setup wizard rather than on home. It has five steps:

1. Locale: the language you translate into. Type a few letters (de, pt_BR, nl_NL_formal) and choose from the matches.
2. Review provider: the AI agent that reviews: Claude Code or Antigravity, whichever is installed and signed in on this machine, or a model on your own computer (experimental), or No AI, which runs the rules alone (what that means). Each option says what it costs.
3. Draft engine and API keys: what fills in untranslated strings: DeepL, OpenAI, a local model, or translation memory only, and the key it needs. Skip this if you only review.
4. Glossary sync: downloads your locale’s glossary from translate.wordpress.org. A review will not start without it.
5. Locale rules: the checks for your language’s conventions. Some locales ship a pack; for the rest this is where you start one. See Locale rules.

Last, it asks once whether to share a few anonymous totals for the website. The answer is No unless you choose Yes; see Usage statistics.

enter chooses and moves on, esc skips a step. You can stop part way: the wizard opens again next time at the first step still missing, and once you have been through it to the end it stays under Configuration › Setup wizard for whenever you want it.

Home

The top of the screen shows:

• the version, and beside it the newer one when npm has a newer release. The same notice, with the command to update, is printed when you quit,
• review and the agent that reviews (p on home switches it),
• setup and how many of the five steps are done, with a tick or a cross for each. Press tab to move onto them, arrows to choose one, and enter to open the wizard at that step.
• stats and an address, while the statistics page is being served.

Below are the cards. Press a card’s letter to open it, or move with the arrows and press enter.

q on home quits.

Keys that work everywhere

The bottom line of every screen shows the keys that matter at that moment, so during a run it shows pause and stop, and once the run is done it shows how to open the result. When you type into a field, letters go into the field; ctrl+k still opens the go-to list.

Running a review or a translation

Review and Translate work the same way, in four stages.

1. Pick a file. The list shows the .po files in the folder you started polyglots from, newest first, with how many entries each holds. .. goes up a folder, s changes the order.
2. Options. The locale (filled in from your settings, or from the file itself when you have none), how many entries go to the agent at a time, and for a review, whether to skip the AI and use the rules alone, and whether to start over instead of carrying on where an earlier run stopped. Move with ↑ ↓ or tab, change a choice with ← → or space, and choose Start with enter.
3. Running. A progress bar, the batch being worked on, the time left and when it should finish, and a panel of the most recent entries with what happened to each: approved, flagged, repaired or unreviewed. p pauses, r resumes and q stops. Each takes effect once the batch in progress finishes, so nothing already paid for is thrown away.
4. Done. A summary. A review shows the message to send the contributor, which c copies, and o opens the repaired file in your .po editor. With a reply template for the locale it also shows the whole reply: y copies it and t switches template. Without one, a line points to Configuration › Reply templates. enter goes back to the menu.

A stopped run is never wasted. Start the same file again and only the entries that were not reached are sent; the rest come from the cache.

Fetch adds two stages at the front: type the projects, one per line, as slugs or translate.wordpress.org addresses (enter on an empty line, or ctrl+d, when the list is done), then choose waiting or untranslated strings and let it check the list. It shows which projects have work and which have none before anything is downloaded.

While a run is going, the go-to list will not leave its screen, and quitting asks first. Once you quit, the path of the last file a run wrote is printed in your terminal, where it stays after the app has closed. Turn that off under Configuration › Interface settings.

Statistics

The statistics screen serves your review history as a page on this machine; o opens it in your browser. It keeps serving after you leave the screen, and the address stays in the header until you stop it with x. w writes a standalone copy you can keep or share, and s serves it again once stopped.

Configuration

Everything set here is the same configuration the commands read; see Configuration.

Terminals without Unicode

Where the terminal cannot draw Unicode (LANG=C, TERM=dumb, or POLYGLOTS_ASCII=1), the app uses plain ASCII: + for a tick, > for the pointer, and simple boxes.

This page is docs/interactive.md in the repository.