# Word Atlas: 7,298 illustrated IELTS words, Anki-grade spaced repetition, and an open dataset you can reuse

> A polished, ad-free, offline-capable vocabulary app — and the more interesting part is that its words, illustrations and audio are released under CC BY 4.0 for anyone to build on.

Published Oct 30, 2026 by TechMeasured Staff · Repos · Canonical: https://techmeasured.com/repos/word-atlas-open-ielts-vocabulary-fsrs

Most vocabulary apps are either ad-riddled or locked behind subscriptions. **Word Atlas** (词光), climbing GitHub's trending list this week, is neither — and it ships with something rarer: a large, permissively licensed dataset.

## What's inside

- **7,298 IELTS words**, each with an original illustration, **UK and US pronunciation**, and two example sentences (14,596 sentences in total).
- **Four recall drills:** pick the meaning, pick the word from an image, identify a word by ear, and spell it.
- A **typing studio** for words, sentences and dictation, with WPM and accuracy tracked separately from memory stats.
- A **"word star map"** — every learned word lights up a star, rendered with custom WebGL2 shaders (with a fallback for devices that can't).
- **Offline support** as a PWA, shareable image cards, and JSON backup/restore.
- **No account, no ads, no tracking.** Progress stays on your device.

## The scheduling is the real engine

Word Atlas uses **ts-fsrs**, an implementation of FSRS — the same open-source scheduling algorithm used by newer versions of Anki. Instead of fixed review intervals, FSRS models how likely you are to forget each word and schedules a review just before that happens. You can adjust the target retention rate.

A nice detail: only your **first answer** to a card counts. Retrying until you get it right doesn't inflate your accuracy — which makes the stats honest.

## The dataset is the bigger gift

The code is MIT-licensed, but the words, illustrations and audio are released under **CC BY 4.0**, with attribution to "Word Atlas contributors (词光)." The data ships as **JSON and CSV** in the `data/` folder. That means teachers, app builders and researchers can reuse a large, illustrated, audio-backed English word list with just a credit line.

One caveat from the maintainers: the content was **auto-validated but not manually reviewed**, so expect occasional errors. Audio was synthesized with ElevenLabs.

## Run it locally

```bash
git clone https://github.com/designfuchen/word-atlas.git
cd word-atlas
npm ci
npm run dev    # http://localhost:5188
```

Requires Node.js 20+. `npm run build` outputs a static site to `dist/` you can host anywhere.

## Our take

A genuinely well-crafted learning tool with a privacy-first design — and an open dataset that's likely to outlive the app itself. If you're studying for IELTS, use it. If you build education tools, look at the `data/` folder.


## Sources

1. [GitHub — designfuchen/word-atlas](https://github.com/designfuchen/word-atlas)
2. [GitHub — Latest 10 trending repositories, October 30, 2026](https://github.com/marc-ko/daily-trending-repo/issues/594)