LearnShortcuts

Sensei (先生) — a teacher, a master of their craft.

LearnShortcuts is a free IntelliJ IDEA plugin that teaches you every keyboard shortcut through interactive, context-aware practice sessions. Instead of reading a cheat sheet, you do the shortcuts — in a safe practice environment where you can see exactly what each one does.

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How it works

1. Open the LearnShortcuts tool window (right sidebar, or Tools → Open LearnShortcuts).
2. Press ▶ Start Session.
3. The plugin shows you an action name (e.g. "Duplicate Line or Selection").
4. Press the correct shortcut on your keyboard.
5. If you're stuck, press 👁 Reveal Shortcut — the answer is shown, but you won't get credit and the shortcut goes to the back of the queue for another try later.
6. When you've answered all shortcuts, a new session begins. The Sessions Completed counter goes up.

Key features

Feature	Detail
🎯 Context-aware practice	Every shortcut is shown in context — a relevant file is open so you see what the shortcut actually does
📊 Statistics	Track correct answers, reveal count, sessions completed, and your hardest shortcuts
🔀 Flexible ordering	Practice in popularity order (most-used first), random, or by category
🔗 Grouped sequences	Related shortcuts are practised back-to-back (e.g. Extend → Shrink Selection)
👁 Reveal without penalty	Peek the answer, retry later — no streak broken
💻 Cross-platform	Mac, Linux, Windows, Chrome OS — shortcuts adapt to your active keymap automatically

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Architecture

learnshortcuts/
├── core/
│   ├── model/          # Shortcut, ShortcutGroup, Session, Statistics
│   ├── engine/         # SessionManager, ShortcutVerifier, SessionManagerService
│   ├── catalog/        # BuiltinShortcutDefinitions, ShortcutRegistry, ShortcutCatalog
│   └── state/          # PluginState (settings), StatisticsState (persistent stats)
├── ui/
│   ├── toolwindow/     # PracticePanel, StatisticsPanel, ToolWindowFactory
│   ├── settings/       # SettingsConfigurable, SettingsPanel
│   └── actions/        # OpenPracticeAction, ShowStatisticsAction
└── practice/
    ├── context/        # ContextProvider per ContextType
    └── project/        # PracticeProjectGenerator — sandbox code files

Key design decisions:

• No hardcoded key bindings. All shortcut keys are read from the active IntelliJ keymap at runtime via KeymapManager. This means the plugin works with any OS, any custom keymap, and any keymap plugin.

• Separate practice project. Practice files live in a temp directory so users never accidentally modify their real project.

• Popularity ranking. Shortcuts are ordered by how often developers actually use them (based on JetBrains productivity data and community surveys), so beginners get the highest-value shortcuts first.

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Technology stack

Concern	Choice
Language	Kotlin (JVM 17)
Build	Gradle 8 with Kotlin DSL + IntelliJ Platform Gradle Plugin v2
Plugin SDK	IntelliJ Platform (since build 233 / IDEA 2023.3)
Testing	JUnit 5 + MockK
Persistence	IntelliJ PersistentStateComponent (XML in IDE config dir)
UI	IntelliJ Swing UI DSL (no external UI framework)

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Building

./gradlew buildPlugin          # produces build/distributions/LearnShortcuts-*.zip
./gradlew runIde               # launches a sandbox IDE with the plugin installed
./gradlew test                 # runs unit tests
./gradlew verifyPlugin         # validates plugin.xml and compatibility

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Publishing

To publish to the JetBrains Plugin Marketplace:

1. Create a JetBrains Marketplace account at https://plugins.jetbrains.com
2. Generate a plugin signing certificate (required since IDEA 2021.2):

   ./gradlew signPlugin

3. Set environment variables:
   • CERTIFICATE_CHAIN — PEM certificate chain
   • PRIVATE_KEY — PEM private key
   • PRIVATE_KEY_PASSWORD — key passphrase
   • PUBLISH_TOKEN — Marketplace API token
4. Run:

   ./gradlew publishPlugin

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Shortcuts that cannot be demonstrated

A handful of shortcuts fundamentally cannot be shown interactively — because executing them would crash the practice session itself. See REQUIREMENTS.md for the full list and reasoning.

These shortcuts still appear in the queue, but the plugin shows a clear explanation instead of a live demo.

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Contributing

Pull requests welcome. See REQUIREMENTS.md for the full product spec.

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Origin

This project was conceived on 22 February 2026.

"I'd like you to create a new plugin that would help users to learn all shortcuts. It should be able to work on any OS — Mac, Linux, Windows, Chromebook. It should be free and easily installed from the IntelliJ IDEA plugin store.

The idea is: the plugin shows the user a shortcut action name — for example 'Close this tab' — and the user should press it. If the user doesn't know what to press, there should be a Reveal button. If the user pressed Reveal and then pressed the correct shortcut, we do NOT consider it correct — we go to the next shortcut, and put the current one at the end of the queue.

We need statistics — total shortcuts, how many times the user walked through all of them, correct and remaining for the current session. Settings should let the user choose random order or most-used order. All shortcuts should have context — if we ask the user to close a tab, there should be an open tab. Some shortcuts should be grouped together (Extend → Shrink Selection). Smart code completion should be split into variants.

Our ultimate goal is an IntelliJ IDEA plugin accessible from the plugin store."

— Max, project founder

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© 2026 MaxBlack-dev — released under the Apache 2.0 licence (see LICENSE)

<--- NAS push test: 2026-02-24 02:42:40 UTC -->