IME Detective: terminal keystroke reproducer

Help CJK input users pinpoint who eats the character after the cursor in their terminal

Problem

Typing Chinese in Ghostty with the WeChat IME makes the character after the cursor vanish one by one when editing mid-line, while end-of-line typing is fine — intermittent enough that users blame shortcuts or overwrite mode. The real cause: the IME's auto-space-between-CJK-and-Latin feature sends an extra Delete after the space, and the terminal interprets it as a physical key that deletes the next character, while iTerm2, Sublime and TextEdit are fine. Debugging this eats hours.

Solution

A diagnostic tool that records and visualizes the actual key events an IME sends into a terminal, flags anomalous Delete/Backspace events and auto-spacing behavior, compares terminal/IME combinations, and generates reproducible steps plus workarounds or upstream bug reports.

Users

Developers using CJK or other non-Latin IMEs, terminal power users, and terminal/IME authors

MVP

Keystroke recording with a timeline view; detection of extra deletes after auto-spacing; built-in comparisons across common terminal/IME combos; one-click reproduction steps

Revenue

Free core plus a one-time (~$15) pro analysis tier; paid bug-report export for terminal and IME teams

Why now

The rise of AI terminals is bringing more people back to the terminal while CJK IME compatibility has long gone unaddressed; event-level diagnostics are simple enough for a small tool