jisho-cli

jisho

A command line for the Jisho Japanese dictionary.

jisho is a single pure-Go binary. It reads public Jisho data (jisho.org) over plain HTTPS, shapes it into clean records, and prints output that pipes into the rest of your tools. No API key, nothing to run alongside it.

The same package is also a resource-URI driver, so a host program like ant can address jisho as jisho:// URIs.

Install

go install github.com/tamnd/jisho-cli/cmd/jisho@latest

Or grab a prebuilt binary from the releases, or run the container image:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/tamnd/jisho:latest --help

Usage

jisho search hello                     # search by English or Japanese
jisho search 日本語 -o json            # as JSON, ready for jq
jisho search hello --common            # common words only
jisho search hello --jlpt n5           # JLPT N5 level only
jisho search hello --page 2            # second page of results
jisho kanji 日                         # look up a kanji character
jisho random                           # a random vocabulary word
jisho --help                           # the whole command tree

Every command shares one output contract: -o table|json|jsonl|csv|tsv|url|raw, --fields to pick columns, --template for a custom line, and -n to limit. The default adapts to where output goes (a table on a terminal, JSONL in a pipe), so the same command reads well by hand and parses cleanly downstream.

Serve it

The same operations are available over HTTP and as an MCP tool set for agents, with no extra code:

jisho serve --addr :7777    # GET /v1/page/<path>  returns NDJSON
jisho mcp                   # speak MCP over stdio

Use it as a resource-URI driver

jisho registers a jisho domain the way a program registers a database driver with database/sql. A host enables it with one blank import:

import _ "github.com/tamnd/jisho-cli/jisho"

Then ant (or any program that links the package) dereferences jisho:// URIs without knowing anything about jisho:

ant get jisho://page/<path>   # fetch the record
ant cat jisho://page/<path>   # just the body text
ant ls  jisho://page/<path>   # the pages it links to, each addressable
ant url jisho://page/<path>   # the live https URL

Development

cmd/jisho/   thin main: hands cli.NewApp to kit.Run
cli/                 assembles the kit App from the jisho domain
jisho/                the library: HTTP client, data models, and domain.go (the driver)
docs/                tago documentation site

make build      # ./bin/jisho
make test       # go test ./...
make vet        # go vet ./...

Releasing

Push a version tag and GitHub Actions runs GoReleaser, which builds the archives, Linux packages, the multi-arch GHCR image, checksums, SBOMs, and a cosign signature:

git tag v0.1.0
git push --tags

The Homebrew and Scoop steps self-disable until their tokens exist, so the first release works with no extra secrets.

License

Apache-2.0. See LICENSE.