Kensei
Kensei is a terminal-native manga curation and delivery system that transforms how you discover, organize, and consume sequential art from the command line. Unlike conventional tools that merely fetch pages, Kensei introduces a declarative approach to manga management, blending Unix philosophy with visual storytelling. It works without a graphical interface, without a browser, and without leaving your keyboard.
---
Overview
Reading manga in the terminal is not a compromise—it is a different kind of immersion. Kensei strips away the noise of modern web interfaces and returns the focus to the art itself: panel flow, contrast, pacing. It processes structured metadata through a pipeline of filters, scrapers, and local formatters, delivering a reading experience that is fast, scriptable, and deeply configurable.
Built with a modular architecture, Kensei allows users to define custom sources, apply transformation rules to downloaded chapters, and export their library into portable formats. It is designed for users who prefer automation over manual clicks, and who value reproducibility in their digital collections.
---
Key Features
🔍 Smart Source Discovery
Kensei does not rely on hardcoded repositories. Instead, it uses a plugin-based system that lets you define your own sources via YAML or JSON configurations. Each source can implement its own search, pagination, and metadata extraction logic—making the tool adaptable to any manga hosting site that exposes structured data.
📦 Declarative Library Management
Organize your collection using tags, reading status, genres, and custom annotations. Kensei maintains a local SQLite index that tracks every chapter you have ever interacted with. You can query your library using SQL-like filters directly from the terminal:
kensei library --where "status = reading AND genre = seinen"🧩 Pipeline-Based Processing
Each chapter goes through an extensible pipeline: fetch, validate, clean, format, cache. You can insert custom hooks at any stage—for example, to rename files, compress images, or generate metadata overlays. The pipeline is declared in TOML and executed deterministically.
🎨 Terminal-Optimized Rendering
Kensei renders manga pages directly in the terminal using block characters, true color support, and aspect-ratio preservation. It adapts to terminal widths dynamically and supports sixel graphics for terminals that offer it. No external viewer required.