Devspeak

A Claude Code plugin that coaches Brazilian developers on technical English for international remote jobs — through role-play with a fictional international team, practicing on your own real code.

Leia em português (README.pt-BR.md)

Enjoying the project? Leave a ⭐ on the repo — it helps other Brazilian devs find Devspeak.

Why

Most English practice for devs is generic. Devspeak is different in two ways:

1. You practice with your own code. /devspeak:explicar-codigo and /devspeak:revisao-pr use your actual git diff so you rehearse explaining or defending your real work — the way you'd actually have to in a standup, a PR review, or an incident call.
2. It's built for Brazilian English speakers specifically. Feedback is explained in pt-BR by default, and the coach draws on a bank of 50+ mistakes typical of Portuguese speakers (false cognates, verb tenses, prepositions, noun order, dev jargon) to explain why something sounds off, not just that it does.

Everything runs locally on your own Claude subscription — no server, no API key. Your practice history stays on your machine.

Prerequisites

• Claude Code installed and logged in (macOS, Linux, or Windows — cmd.exe, PowerShell, or WSL all work).
• No extra account or key needed for day-to-day use — Devspeak runs on your normal Claude Code subscription.

Example session

> /devspeak:diaria

Sarah: Morning! Let's do a quick standup — what did you work on yesterday?

You: Yesterday I fix the login bug and I working on the API since morning.

[Dica rápida: "I fixed the login bug" (não "I fix") — ação já concluída no passado.]

Sarah: Nice, glad that's sorted. What's the plan for the rest of today then?

You: today I finish the API and start review the PR from Priya

[Dica rápida: "start reviewing" (não "start review") — depois de "start", use gerúndio.]

Sarah: Sounds good. Any blockers on the PR review, or should be quick?

You: done

Sarah: Alright, let's wrap up the role-play here.

---
**Estimated level: A2** — clear yesterday/today structure, but tense mixing
("I fix", "I working") is frequent enough to slow a listener down.

| You said                      | Natural form                          | Why (pt-BR) |
|--------------------------------|----------------------------------------|-------------|
| "I fix the login bug"          | "I fixed the login bug"                | Ação concluída no passado → simple past, não presente. |
| "I working on the API"         | "I've been working on the API"         | Ação contínua desde um ponto no passado → present perfect continuous. |
| "start review the PR"          | "start reviewing the PR"               | Depois de "start", use gerúndio (-ing). |
...

Note the [Dica rápida: ...] correction shows up during the conversation, not just at the end — that's the default behavior (correction_mode: inline).

Installation

/plugin marketplace add rodrigoscharp/devspeak
/plugin install devspeak@devspeak

Already installed and something looks stale?

Devspeak has moved fast (Portuguese command names, automatic inline correction, voice mode). If you installed a while ago, force an update:

/plugin marketplace update devspeak
/reload-plugins

Commands

Command names are in Portuguese — the practice content and persona dialogue are always in English, but you shouldn't need to know English yet to find the right command.

Devspeak also ships a tech-english-vocab skill that activates automatically whenever you ask "how do I say X in English?" for a work/technical phrase — no command needed. Phrases you look up this way are automatically added to the spaced-repetition queue for /devspeak:vocabulario.

Voice mode (optional)

Any role-play command can run out loud instead of by typing — just ask for it ("let's do this by voice"). There are two independent halves, and neither needs an API key for most people:

• Hearing you: use Claude Code's own built-in /voice dictation to speak your answers — zero setup, no API key, works with any claude.ai login. Devspeak just treats the dictated text like a normal typed message.
• Hearing the persona: Devspeak's speak MCP tool reads the persona's lines out loud, using your OS's built-in TTS by default (say on macOS, System.Speech on Windows, espeak-ng/spd-say on Linux — install one of those two on Linux). No API key either.

/voice doesn't work over SSH, on Claude Code on the web, or when Claude Code is authenticated with a direct Anthropic API key / Bedrock / Vertex / Foundry (no claude.ai session). Only in that case, Devspeak also ships a listen MCP tool as a fallback capture method — it needs sox plus either a free Groq API key or a local whisper.cpp install. See mcp-server/README.md for that setup, plus optional Piper (local) or ElevenLabs (cloud) voices for speak.

Skip all of this setup entirely and Devspeak just runs in text mode.

Configuration

Set these when installing, or later via /plugin:

Privacy

Devspeak runs entirely on your machine using your existing Claude subscription. There's no backend server and no API key required for the core coaching experience, including the recommended voice setup (/voice dictation + the default system TTS backend are both free and local/first-party). Your practice history (progress.json), vocabulary queue (vocab.json), and — only if you enable passive_mode — your logged prompts (passive-log.json) are stored locally in the plugin's data directory and are never sent anywhere by Devspeak itself. passive_mode is off by default; nothing is logged unless you turn it on.

The one exception is the listen fallback tool, and only if you're in a setup where /voice isn't available and choose to configure it: by default it would send recorded audio to Groq's API for transcription (using your own API key). Switch stt_backend to whispercpp to keep that fully local instead. speak() stays fully local unless you explicitly configure elevenlabs as the tts_backend.

FAQ

Commands are in Portuguese but Sarah speaks English — is that a bug? No, that's intentional. The Portuguese command name helps you find the right feature without already knowing English; the practice content itself (persona dialogue, grammar corrections) is in English because that's what you're training. The why behind each correction is explained in Portuguese.

Does this cost anything? No. It runs on your normal Claude Code subscription — no server, no API key. The one exception is configuring voice mode in a setup where native /voice doesn't work (SSH, web) — that would use your own free Groq key. For most people, that never comes up.

I updated but nothing changed. Run both, in order, and wait for each to finish:

/plugin marketplace update devspeak
/reload-plugins

If it's still stale, restart Claude Code entirely.

Does it work on Windows? Yes — cmd.exe, PowerShell, and WSL all work, including voice mode.

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for what's planned beyond the current release: a passive mode that reviews your everyday English prompts, spaced-repetition vocabulary, an optional voice MCP server, and phoneme-level pronunciation scoring.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, especially new scenarios and additions to the common-mistakes bank. See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.