arabic rtl fix

Arabic and Hebrew speakers often struggle with Electron-based desktop apps that render text in the wrong direction. While Chromium handles character shaping, it frequently defaults to LTR alignment, resulting in scrambled, unreadable paragraphs. This skill fixes the problem at the source by injecting a bidi-aware patch into the app's renderer.

What it does

• Electron detection identifies if the target application is built on Electron by scanning for specific resource structures.
• Safety validation checks Electron fuses to prevent breaking apps that have integrity validation or ASAR loading restrictions enabled.
• Automated extraction unpacks app.asar archives and merges external native binaries to ensure the app remains functional post-patch.
• Injection patching inserts a battle-tested CSS/JS snippet into renderer HTML files to force dir="auto" behavior.
• Atomic swapping uses background watchers to replace application resources the moment the user closes the app, avoiding file-in-use errors.
• Maintenance generation creates local scripts for the user to easily roll back changes or re-apply the patch after an app update.

How it works

1. Identify the application's resource directory and confirm Node.js version compatibility.
2. Execute a fuse check to ensure the application allows modified ASAR contents.
3. Patch the renderer HTML entry points by injecting the RTL snippet.
4. Deploy the changes by renaming the original archive and activating the patched folder.

Frameworks & tools

The skill utilizes node.js, the @electron/asar utility for archive manipulation, and the @electron/fuses library for security checks. It relies on standard shell commands (find, cp, mv) and PowerShell for Windows process management.

Why this beats prompting it yourself

Manual patching of Electron apps is high-risk, as missing the app.asar.unpacked merge or ignoring fuse settings will crash the application immediately. This skill handles the specific edge cases of file locking and code signing that generic prompts overlook.

Use cases

• Fix reversed Arabic text in desktop apps like Slack, Discord, or Notion.
• Restore RTL support to Cursor or Claude Code after a software update.
• Patch custom internal Electron tools that lack native bidi support.
• Automate the rollback of patches if an application fails integrity checks.

Known limitations

Does not fix terminal panels using xterm.js or native non-Electron applications. macOS users may need to re-sign the app ad-hoc after patching to satisfy Gatekeeper requirements.