Repy
Terminal ePub reader with built-in TTS and dictionary lookup
Details
- External ID
- 47021114
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- Repy
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Feb. 15, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 5
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.10512129380053908
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I built repy because I wanted to read EPUBs over SSH and in tmux without leaving the terminal. It started as a Rust reimplementation of epy (a Python CLI ebook reader), but has grown well beyond that.Features: vim-style navigation (hjkl, /, n/N, Ctrl+o/Ctrl+i jump history), bookmarks, table of contents, visual mode with yank-to-clipboard, regex search across chapters, and per-book width/position persistence via SQLite.Two features I'm particularly happy with:- Text-to-speech: Press ! and it reads the book aloud, sentence by sentence (~300-400 chars per chunk), with the current passage underlined. Uses edge-playback (Microsoft Edge TTS) by default, configurable to espeak, say, or any custom command. Smart scrolling keeps the spoken text visible without jumping around unnecessarily. - Dictionary lookup: Select a word in visual mode and press d for dictionary (auto-detects wkdict/sdcv/dict) or p for Wikipedia summary. Configurable to any custom command.Full disclosure: this project is almost entirely AI-built. I don't know Rust — I described what I wanted and Claude Code wrote the implementation. The fact that a non-Rust-programmer can build and iterate on a 5000+ line Rust TUI application through conversation is, honestly, kind of amazing. Every feature, bug fix, and refactor in this project went through that workflow.
Enrichment
- Theme
- git and repository workflow tools
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- terminal epub reader with text-to-speech and dictionary
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Yes Terminal TUI applications with text parsing, standard dictionary lookup APIs, and local TTS integration are well-understood domains that AI coding assistants excel at implementing.
Discussion
No comments on this launch.
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 88 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #86 of 89 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 102 days after the earliest competitor.
- Xleak · hn · 2025-11-09 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- I built an iOS app that turns EPUBs into audiobooks · hn · 2026-02-24 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Rust based eBook library for Python, with MIT license · hn · 2026-04-09 · 33 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Gitdot · hn · 2026-06-08 · 334 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Fresh · hn · 2025-12-03 · 187 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Browse GitHub repos in Emacs without cloning · hn · 2026-04-26 · 24 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Free EPUB Tools Online · ph · 2026-09-11 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.40
- Heard for iOS: ePub reader with on-device text to speech · hn · 2026-07-15 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.39
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
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