KIBITZ

Open-source desktop app · macOS & Linux

Kibitz is a chess coach that explains positions in human terms — and trains you on your own weaknesses.

Underneath the coach sits a ChessBase-class database: SCID and PGN import, opening prep, spaced-repetition repertoires, tactics, and tablebase endgames. Everything stays on your machine, and the engine stays off until a tactical screen fires or you ask.

Download Read the user guide GPL-3.0 app on BSD-3-Clause libraries · no account, no telemetry
The Kibitz game view: a walnut chess board with tactical-alert rings and attacker arrows drawn on the squares, beside an Explain panel that describes the position in plain English sentences and an annotated move list.

The coach

Explanations you can read, evidence you can see.

The Explain panel narrates each position in plain sentences — tactical alerts, imbalances, plans — and every sentence is wired to marks on the board. Hover a sentence and its evidence lights up. The prose comes from Kibitz's own static analysis, so it runs instantly and works offline; the full engine is reserved for confirming what the screens find.

The Kibitz home screen: a continue-review card, an openings-due count, an opponent-prep search box, a findings panel naming the player's biggest leaks, and a list of games imported this week.

Your day at a glance

Home shows only real data: the game you left open, cards due, new imports this week, and your profile's top findings. Absent data means absent panels — never invented widgets.

The Kibitz profile screen: a motif matrix of missed and allowed tactics, per-structure score bars, phase accuracy in ACPL, and an evidence pane listing the exact games behind one finding.

Trained on your own games

The profiler reads your corpus and names your leaks — loose pieces, exposed kings, weak structures — with every number linked to the games that produced it. One click drills the weakness it found.

The database

A serious database underneath.

Kibitz keeps everything in one SQLite file you own — games, annotations, engine evaluations, training history, and the provenance of every import.

  • Import SCID (.si4) databases and PGN files, with comments, NAGs, and variations preserved
  • Opening tree and full-board position search across the whole database
  • Opponent prep: repertoire fingerprints and book deviations for any player
  • Openings repertoires trained with FSRS spaced repetition
  • Tactics training from the Lichess puzzle database
  • Endgame drills with Syzygy tablebase verdicts
  • TWIC, Lichess, chess.com, and FICS game downloads to your machine
  • Batch engine analysis through a job queue — the engine is cold by default

Download

Get Kibitz

Builds are published on GitHub Releases. Kibitz is free software under the GPL-3.0.

Latest release All releases

macOS

Download the .dmg, drag Kibitz to Applications.

The first release is unsigned while Apple enrollment completes — right-click the app → Open the first time you launch it.

Linux

.AppImage: make it executable (chmod +x) and run it.

.deb: install with sudo dpkg -i on Debian and Ubuntu.

Build from source

Rust + Node are all you need. See Building from source in the README.

Support

Support the Temecula Chess Club

Kibitz's maintainer runs and supports the Temecula Chess Club. If the app is useful to you, a donation to the club is the best way to say thanks — it keeps club nights going: boards, clocks, space, and coffee.