About a year ago I shared an early version of this project here. At the time it was rough around the edges, but the feedback was surprisingly positive. Since then, it has grown quite a bit.

It started as a remapper inspired by many QMK-style ideas, but built around a different interaction model.

Instead of treating tap dance, leader sequences and similar features as separate mechanisms, the system is built around events and transitions. Taps, holds, modifiers, chords and gestures all follow the same rules: any of them can execute an action, expose additional nested assignments, or do both at the same time. The transition logic allows any event to perform its own action while still exposing further assignments (of any kind), rather than forcing actions to exist only at the end of a chain.

Context-aware behavior is another major part of the project. Assignments and everything that follows from them can depend on multiple conditions simultaneously, including the active application, window title/tab and several other criteria. For example, the same event can have one action globally, expose different actions in a browser, another set in a specific tab, and remain completely native in games.

Gestures eventually became one of the largest parts of the project. They grew far beyond simple mouse gestures, gaining features such as continuous gesture chains, independent zones/pools, configurable recognition, live guidance while drawing and other additions over time.

Any key or mouse button can act as an independent trigger with its own gesture sets, without giving up its existing behavior.

Everything is configured through a GUI, and changes take effect immediately. Assignments are organized into files that I call layers. These are not quite the same layers familiar to the community. Multiple layers can be active simultaneously, combining their assignments. Layer switching is still a normal part of everyday use, but context-aware behavior and event chains often reduce the need for it.

The project is still evolving, and new ideas keep finding their way into it. One limitation is that it's currently Windows-only, though I'd like to change that someday.

There are several gif/mp4 demos in the repository if you'd like to see how it works. The app also includes ready-to-use demo layers to get started quickly.

There are also many features, customization options and workflow possibilities that were left out of this post. If anything sounds interesting, you can find more information in the readme and wiki, or just ask in the comments – I'd be happy to explain things in more detail and answer any questions.

GitHub:

https://github.com/uqqu/Cadans

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the overall approach, what feels missing, or whether this solves any problems you've run into yourself.

An event-driven input system with chains, gestures and context-aware behavior