christ-cli

A beautiful Bible TUI for Christian developers. Read Scripture in your terminal.

Built with Rust. Single binary. Works offline with bundled KJV.

Install

npm install -g christ-cli

Or with curl:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/whoisyurii/christ-cli/main/install.sh | sh

Usage

Launch the interactive TUI browser:

christ

Read a specific verse:

christ read John 3:16

Read a chapter:

christ read Genesis 1

Read a verse range:

christ read Psalm 23:1-6

References work in your language too — book names in Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Ukrainian, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese are recognized, with . or , as chapter/verse separators:

christ read "João 3.16"
christ read "1. Mose 3,16"
christ read "Буття 1"
christ read "約翰福音 3:16"

Commands use the translation you picked in the TUI (via v); override it with -t:

christ read "João 3.16" -t NAA

Search the Bible:

christ search "love one another"

Random verse:

christ random

Verse of the day:

christ today

Replay the startup animation:

christ intro

The animated banner plays on your first launch only — after that, christ opens straight into reading. Use --banner to see it again on launch (or --no-banner to skip it even on the first run).

Interactive TUI

When you run christ with no arguments, it launches a full-screen terminal browser:

• Left/Right arrows / h l - switch between panels (Books, Chapters, Scripture)
• Up/Down arrows / j k - navigate within a panel (moves the verse cursor in the Scripture panel); the Scripture panel live-previews the highlighted book or chapter as you browse
• Enter - select a book or chapter
• / - live search the Bible (full text of the selected result shows in a preview pane)
• y (or c) - copy the selected verse to the clipboard
• Y (or C) - start a verse-range selection; move with j/k, then Y copies it (Esc cancels)
• p - toggle between verse-per-line and paragraph reading view (in paragraph view, y copies the whole chapter)
• t - cycle themes (Slate, Midnight, Parchment, Gospel, Terminal)
• v - pick a translation
• ? - help overlay with every keybinding and its variations
• qq - quit (press q twice)

Your reading position, view mode, and theme are saved automatically.

Features

• Full-screen TUI with 3-panel browser (Books | Chapters | Scripture)
• Verse-per-line or paragraph reading view, with a verse cursor
• Copy verses, ranges, or chapters to the system clipboard (native + OSC 52, so it works over SSH)
• Animated startup banner
• Live search with instant results as you type and a full-text preview
• Themes: Slate (dark), Midnight (shadcn/Vercel dark), Parchment (warm light), Gospel (bright white), Terminal (transparent)
• Bundled KJV Bible (works 100% offline, no internet required)
• Online API fallback for 50+ other translations via Bolls.life
• Forgiving reference parser (jn 3:16, 1cor 13, Ps 23:1-6, João 3.16, 1. Mose 3,16 all work)
• Book names understood in 12 languages
• Pipe-friendly (plain text when piped, rich TUI when interactive)
• Session persistence (remembers where you left off)

Tech

• Rust single binary (~5MB)
• ratatui + crossterm for the TUI
• Bundled KJV (4.7MB embedded, public domain)
• Bolls.life API for other translations (no auth key needed)
• Cross-platform: macOS, Linux, Windows

License

MIT