leonardo-davinci

The complete notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, in your terminal — 7,549 manuscript pages across 28 collections, each with high-resolution scans, the original Italian transcription, and a full English translation.

Powered by the free Da-Vinci API. No key, no signup.

npx leonardo-davinci random --subject anatomy
npx leonardo-davinci search flying machine
npx leonardo-davinci folio codex-atlanticus 1646 --full
npx leonardo-davinci download codex-arundel 30

Install

npm install -g leonardo-davinci     # installs the `da-vinci` command
da-vinci <command>
# or run one-off with npx leonardo-davinci — nothing to install

Requires Node 18.17+.

Commands

| Command | What it does | |---|---| | collections | List all 28 collections | | collection <slug> | One collection and its pages (--limit, --offset) | | folio <slug> <index> | Read one page — summary, highlights, translation (--full) | | subjects | The frozen 25-term subject vocabulary | | subject <id> | Every page tagged with a subject | | search <query…> | Full-text search (--subject, --collection) | | random | A random page (--subject, --collection) | | download <slug> <index> | Save the scan (--size thumbnail\|medium\|highRes, --out <dir>) | | open <slug> [index] | Open the page on venivididavinci.com |

Add --json to any read command for machine-readable output.

Rate limits & keys

Anonymous use is free at 60 requests/hour. For more, pass --api-key or set DAVINCI_API_KEY. See authentication.

Attribution

Anything you build with this content must credit venivididavinci.com and link the source page. Every folio response includes a ready-made attribution string. Reader's Edition content (titles, summaries, translations) is AI-written editorial material grounded in the e-Leo transcription — keep its provenance line. Full terms: attribution.

Security

This package is built to be maximally auditable:

• Zero runtime dependencies — the entire tool is one file of Node builtins.
• No install scripts, no telemetry, no config files.
• HTTPS only, to venivididavinci.com origins exclusively (downloads included — hosts are allowlisted even though URLs come from the API).
• All inputs validated before touching URLs, paths, or processes; the browser opener uses execFile (no shell); downloads are traversal-safe and never overwrite existing files.
• API keys are sent only to the API origin and never logged.

Audit it yourself: npm pack leonardo-davinci --dry-run — it ships dist/cli.js, README.md, and LICENSE, nothing else.