Lingo — your translation assistant

Lingo is an AI assistant built into the glotfile web UI. It can read your project and your codebase, then help you set up everything that makes your app translate well — your project context, per-language rules, glossary, per-string context, and source strings — through a conversation. Lingo doesn’t do the translating itself; it gets the setup right so the translations the app produces come out good.

Requirements

⚠ Lingo needs an Anthropic provider Lingo is powered by Anthropic models. The toggle only appears when your active AI provider (Settings → AI) is Anthropic and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is set in the environment running the server. With any other provider, Lingo stays hidden. See AI Providers.

Opening Lingo

Click the ✨ Lingo button at the top-right of the header, or press ⌘ J (Ctrl J on Windows/Linux).
The shortcut summons Lingo and focuses the message box; pressing it again while you’re typing hides the panel. Esc also closes it.

Docked or expanded

Lingo opens beside your work, and remembers the layout you last used:

Docked — a resizable column next to the current view. Drag its left edge to resize; the width is remembered across sessions.
Expanded — a wider drawer over most of the content for longer conversations. Click the dimmed area (or the minimise button) to collapse back to the docked column.

What Lingo can do

Understand your project — locales, keys, translation progress, and the guidance and glossary you already have.
Read your codebase — search and read files (your README, components, locale files) to learn what your product actually is. This is read-only and scoped to your project directory.
Author guidance — write your project context and per-language rules for you, so the AI translator has the background it needs. See How Translation Works.
Build your glossary — add terms that must translate consistently or stay verbatim, and accept or dismiss suggested terms.
Sharpen each string — write the per-key context that disambiguates a key, set tags and a length budget, fix or reword source text, and add new keys.

What Lingo won’t do: Lingo never writes or reviews translations — single or bulk. When you want strings translated or a whole language reviewed, run it from the app’s own translate/review controls; Lingo’s job is to make that run come out better, not to do it for you.

How Lingo works with you

Lingo proposes, then waits Lingo shows you the change it intends to make and waits for you to approve or adjust it before writing anything — it won’t silently rewrite your config. Larger or bulk actions ask for an explicit confirmation first.

Every change Lingo makes is written straight to glotfile.json — so it shows up as an ordinary git diff you can review or revert — and is recorded in the AI Log alongside your translation runs.

Conversation history & privacy

Your conversation is stored locally, per project, under ./.glotfile/chats/ (git-ignored) and survives page reloads. New chat clears it.
As with every AI feature, only what’s needed crosses the network and no API keys are ever written to disk. See AI Log.

AI Providers · How Translation Works · AI Log · Settings