Zayit - the study library that goes straight to the text

English | עברית

Zayit is a free app to read, search, and explore Jewish study texts. Built for study: fast search, smooth navigation, clean citations. For review, preparing a lesson, or studying with a partner.

Free. Clear. Efficient.

To download, click below

Vision

Zayit is a dream turned useful: a natural, fluid, almost obvious study experience. The project will remain free by principle. Support is welcome and meaningful. It is designed to stay non-commercial. With God's help, Zayit will keep growing without losing its spirit.

In the spirit of a study hall

Zayit is designed like a digital study hall: stable, fast, consistent. You feel the calm of study: everything works, everything is in its place. The text stays at the center, with respect and without distractions.

A pro and natural interface

Zayit is built on JetBrains technologies, including Compose Desktop and Jewel. Inspired by Google Chrome and IntelliJ IDEA, it offers a professional interface that is fluid and natural, respects study, and does not strain the eyes. Zayit is easy to use: you already know how, no learning curve. Everything feels natural, intuitive, and within reach.

Modular panels

The layout adapts instantly: organize the screen the way you want. Show, hide, compare, and tailor reading to your study style.

An exceptional search engine

A powerful engine designed to understand texts, not just find them. The database was rebuilt to make search and navigation precise. Every result helps you move forward on the topic, without wasting time. Powered by Lucene and enhanced by AI for precision. It is likely the most powerful engine ever built for this kind of study. It finds words, forms, and variants with remarkable reliability. Search is fast, stable, and guides you straight to the right source.

• Find a passage even from a partial word or approximate spelling.
• Even without vocalization or cantillation marks, search stays clear and reliable.
• A partial phrase is often enough to reach the right place.
• Clean, readable, immediate results, useful for review and lesson prep.

Simple to go fast, advanced to go far.

Simple search.

Advanced search.

Crafted with care

Zayit aims for quality and consistency: no gimmicks, no noise. Like a digital study desk, everything is there to move forward. Every detail is designed for natural, respectful study. Built to be fast, light, almost magical, it runs even on low-powered machines.

What Zayit lets you do

• Find a passage in seconds with simple or advanced search.
• Explore a library by book and table of contents without losing the thread.
• Search inside a book to prepare a lesson or review.
• Show commentaries and translations side by side.
• Access sources for a passage quickly.
• Copy a clean excerpt to share in a lesson or with a study partner.
• Switch instantly between light and dark themes.

Book navigation

Find a book, jump straight to a chapter, and continue your reading.

Book search.

Table of contents.

Search within a book

Like Ctrl+F: you already know how to use it.

Commentaries and translations

Choose your commentaries and translations, compare, and move forward in the text.

Commentaries.

Commentaries and translations.

Sources

Find the origin of a passage at a glance.

Copy to clipboard

Contributing

Zayit welcomes contributions from the community: bug fixes and features listed in the roadmap.

Note: PRs introducing new features not listed in the roadmap will likely be declined.

Getting started

Clone the repository with submodules:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/kdroidFilter/Zayit.git

Important: You must use JetBrains Runtime 25 (JBR 25) as your JAVA_HOME.

Architecture guidelines

Project structure:

• SeforimApp/ — Main desktop application (Compose Multiplatform)
• SeforimLibrary/ — Composite build: core (domain models), dao (SQLDelight persistence), generator (data pipeline, JVM only)

Dependency injection (Metro):

• Access the DI graph via LocalAppGraph.current
• Use @AssistedInject + @AssistedFactory for ViewModels

Naming conventions:

• *ViewModel for ViewModels
• *View for UI components
• *State for UI state data classes
• *Event for user action types

Tab system:

• Each screen must know its tabId
• Use remember(appGraph, tabId) to create ViewModels
• Use TabStateManager for tab-scoped state persistence

Source sets:

• Shared code in commonMain
• Platform-specific code in jvmMain
• Platform types must not leak from jvmMain to commonMain

For detailed documentation, see CLAUDE.md and TAB_SYSTEM_README.md.

Roadmap 0.5.0

• Navigation history
• Personal notes on text (Google Docs-like annotations)
• Fix P0 and P1 issues
• New home page widgets (time since destruction of Beit HaMikdash, history)
• Chrome-like bookmarks bar
• Automatic updates (Chrome-like): silent download + installation on app close

Before submitting a PR

Run the linter and tests:

./gradlew ktlintCheck
./gradlew :SeforimApp:jvmTest

Thanks

Thanks to the projects and libraries that make Zayit possible: JetBrains (Kotlin, Compose Desktop, Jewel), Apache (Lucene), and all open source authors. Thanks also to Sefaria and Otzaria for the quality and openness of their databases.

Sources and rights

Zayit relies on corpora from Sefaria and Otzaria Library, converted to SQL via SeforimLibrary. Each work may have its own terms: the user agrees to respect them. Zayit and its authors cannot be held responsible for non-compliant use.

Typography

The project includes licensed fonts: Rashi Amiti (exclusive to Zayit, with permission from The ImageMaster) and fonts from the Culmus project (their own licenses).

License and sharing

Zayit is free and open source, published under AGPL v3. Sharing is encouraged - it is a good deed.

---

Zayit is free and open source. For license details, see LICENSE.

Built with love by Elie Gambache ❤️