DeutschLoop

DeutschLoop is a German tutor for Claude Code that remembers your mistakes. It files each one under its root cause, which it calls your FehlerDNA, and brings it back later in a sentence you have not written before. Its mod, the plugin nochmal, moves that review into the time you spend waiting on Claude: what is due sits in the status line, and when a turn runs long a review card opens above the prompt.

What it does

The tutor is a skill. It corrects with the fewest changes, offers a hint before the answer and saves the hint that worked. A pattern you get wrong returns after 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days, each time in a new situation, and counts as mastered after six passed reviews. A failed review sends it back to the first step.

A small local engine keeps the books and refuses shortcuts: a review before its date, an answer you have already given, a reused exercise, a pass after a hint. In the README’s words, “Language models are generous graders.” The tutor also runs fifteen roleplay settings, from job interviews to hotels and phone appointments, shows a profile of your weak spots grouped by root cause, and undoes a correction when you tell it that it was not a mistake. Explanations come in the language you choose.

The mod adds five things to Claude Code:

• Status line. How many patterns and how many words from your scenes are due, and your streak in days. It refreshes when a session starts, when the tutor records something, and after a turn if the last check is more than a minute old.
• A card while Claude works. When a turn passes 12 seconds and something is due, a card opens above the prompt with one due pattern, or one due word, and a fresh situation in your explanation language that asks for one German sentence. Answer in the card’s field (in the terminal, ctrl+x tab reaches it; in Desktop, click it) or type /nochmal followed by your sentence while Claude keeps working. Später, or /nochmal später, puts the card away until the next long turn. No card opens during a turn that calls the tutor or while a scene runs.
• The back of the card. A right or wrong answer is saved as a review. The card shows the next step and its date, the minimal correction when you were wrong, and the first sentence you got wrong with that pattern next to today’s. An answer that does not use the pattern saves nothing and leaves the card open.
• FehlerDNA pane. /fehlerdna lists every pattern on its six-step ladder, with how often you got it wrong and when it is next due. Due patterns come first, mastered ones last. Choose a row to read its history, from the first mistake to the hint that helped. The pane updates after every review.
• Scene pane. When the tutor starts a roleplay, a pane opens beside the chat with the partner’s role, your goal, your turns, a clock against the scene’s target time and how many times you asked for help. The Hilfe button asks the partner for a small hint without leaving the role, and the mod makes sure that turn is saved as help, so a sentence you wrote with it never counts as unaided. The pane closes 20 seconds after the scene ends.

Ahmet Sahin also wrote bugdex, another mod in this directory.

Install

Needs Claude Code 2.1.287 or later, plus Python 3.10 or later. The mod reads the tutor’s memory, so install both plugins from the author’s marketplace:

claude plugin marketplace add ahmtsahin/deutsch-loop
claude plugin install deutsch-loop@deutsch-loop
claude plugin install nochmal@deutsch-loop

deutsch-loop is the tutor, a skill you start with /deutsch-loop:deutsch-loop. nochmal is the mod. If you already cloned the skill into ~/.claude/skills/deutsch-loop, skip the second install so the skill appears only once; the mod finds the engine there too. The tutor needs a one-time permission to save progress, covered in the repository’s installation and permissions guide.

Do a first exercise with the tutor. From then on /nochmal opens a due card at once, /fehlerdna opens your patterns and /szene shows the running roleplay.

How it works

DeutschLoop keeps your record in ~/.deutschloop as plain JSON files you can read, copy or delete. DEUTSCHLOOP_HOME moves it, and a ~/.deutschdna folder from the project’s old name is still read. Lessons go to the model you already use, with no extra API key, account, server or telemetry.

The mod stores nothing of its own beyond the open card and the pane views, which live in Claude Code’s plugin state. To read or save anything it runs the tutor’s Python engine (python, python3 or py -3), found in the cloned skill, the installed tutor plugin, the marketplace’s copy or the current project. It never edits the memory files: answers go through the engine’s own grading commands, so the same refusals apply.

Writing a card’s situation and checking your answer each cost one Sonnet call through your Claude Code login. The status line and the panes run locally and use no tokens. Hilfe submits a prompt to Claude like any message you send.

The mod hooks tool.call for Bash and PowerShell and reads each command, but acts only on calls to the DeutschLoop engine: after one that records a review or moves a scene, it refreshes the status line and the panes. After you press Hilfe, if the tutor saves the partner’s reply without a --support flag, the mod adds --support hint to that command before it runs. Every other command passes through unchanged. It also checks each prompt for the word deutsch-loop, only to skip the card during a tutoring turn.

Limitations

• Nothing appears until the tutor has saved something. Before your first session, and without Python, the commands only report what is missing.
• The mod’s own labels are in German (Später, prüfen, Hilfe and the status line). Situations and notes come in your explanation language.
• The author documents the terminal and the Desktop app’s Code tab. Nothing draws in claude -p or the VS Code extension’s chat panel.
• The tutor also runs in Codex. The mod has no Codex equivalent.
• Practice is text only: no microphone or pronunciation scoring.