Parseh

A toolkit for learning languages through annotated content and active recall. Read books and watch videos glossed the Ilya Frank way, chunk by chunk, with the narration in step; write notes and interactive exercises in a Markdown dialect of its own and study them with spaced repetition; turn anything you read into Anki cards. Eleven languages: Persian, Arabic, Italian, Japanese, French, German, Turkish, English, Hindi, Spanish and Chinese.

In alpha: bugs are to be expected. The newest version is on the releases page, with what it changed; the one you are running is written at the foot of Parseh's hub. (CHANGELOG.md lists every version.)

The guide — installing, using and extending Parseh, and the full reference of its Markdown dialect — is at https://parseh.io/guide/.

Quick start

Download parseh-<version>.zip from the newest release's Assets on the releases page — not Code → Download ZIP, which is the source code — and unpack it where Parseh will live. In that folder:

Linux	macOS	Windows
./install.sh, then ./serve.sh	double-click Parseh.command	double-click install.bat, then serve.bat

Then open https://localhost:7654/ and accept the browser's warning about the certificate, once — it is one Parseh makes for this computer alone.

A fresh install answers this computer and any other on your personal VPN: Tailscale's range is trusted out of the box, and any other name or range you add. The local network access is also allowed — open it in Settings → Network, on the hub, and let each phone in once with the pairing code the page shows.

A new version comes in from Settings → Updating Parseh, keeping your books, videos, decks, dictionaries and settings.

Then read on the phone. The mobile interface installs as an app:

Android	iOS
1. Download the certificate from /m/install/, then Settings → search CA certificate → Install anyway, and pick Parseh-CA.crt.	1. Download the certificate, Install the profile in Settings, then General → About → Certificate Trust Settings and turn on full trust for Parseh local authority.
2. Chrome offers Install Parseh on that page; or its ⋮ menu → Install app.	2. In Safari, the Share button → Add to Home Screen.

The guide has the details: Installing Parseh, Reaching Parseh from other devices and Browser and Mobile.

License

Copyright © 2026 Bruno Ursino, the author of Parseh — GitHub · imbrunoursino.net.

Parseh is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or (at your option) any later version — GPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE); every source file says so in its SPDX-License-Identifier line.

What it carries of other people's work keeps their licences:

• the fonts in lib/fonts/ (Vazirmatn, Noto Naskh Arabic, Noto Nastaliq Urdu, Noto Serif Devanagari): SIL Open Font License 1.1 — the licence and their copyright notices in lib/fonts/OFL.txt, every file named in lib/fonts/README.md;
• TeX Gyre Pagella, Heros and Chorus, which now travel with Parseh in lib/fonts/ (Pagella, Heros and Chorus also in the compiled guide, html-guide/site/_parseh/fonts/; Chorus sets only the name Parseh, in the bars and the hub's title): GUST Font License (lib/fonts/GUST-FONT-LICENSE.txt), every file named in lib/fonts/README.md;
• MathJax 3.2.2 (lib/mathjax/): Apache License 2.0 (its LICENSE beside it);
• the Italian hyphenation patterns (markdown/exlex/assets/hyph/hyph-it.tex, © Claudio Beccari, hyph-utf8): LaTeX Project Public License 1.3 or later, or MIT — the file's header says so and carries the MIT text;
• excerpts in the tests' data (tests/fixtures/): conjugation rows from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0) and sentences from Tatoeba (CC BY 2.0 FR). tests/fixtures/README.md says where every test text comes from.

The dictionaries, sentences, translation models and character data the reading help downloads on request are not in the repository; each keeps its own licence, which travels inside the file it becomes. The app's Licences page (the hub's foot, /licences/) lists all of it. The repository ships the software and none of the content: what you read with it is yours.