There's a specific failure mode with language learning tools: you get a translation, you use it, and three days later you've retained nothing because you processed it as a task, not as language.
I built konid because I wanted to tell my girlfriend something personal in her first language and have it sound like I meant it — not like I copy-pasted from Google Translate. Literal translation tools return one answer with no register, no cultural framing, no indication of whether you're being warm or coldly polite.
konid returns three options per query, ordered casual to formal, each with the register explained and a nuance comparison between them. But the part that changed how I actually retain things: it plays audio pronunciation directly through your speakers via node-edge-tts, no API key required. Hearing the tone contour and vowel length on all three options at once — not just reading the romanization — is what makes the difference stick. You're not just seeing that formal Japanese uses a different verb ending; you're hearing how the whole sentence weight shifts.
13+ languages including Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Arabic, and Hindi.
Installs as an MCP server in one line:
claude mcp add konid-ai -- npx -y konid-ai
Also works in Cursor, VS Code Copilot, Windsurf, Zed, JetBrains, and Cowork. If you're on ChatGPT, there's a Developer mode endpoint at https://konid.fly.dev/mcp.
MIT licensed. https://github.com/robertnowell/konid-language-learning
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