vocab

Self-hosted vocabulary builder — a small dictionary app for people who read.

Why this was made

I made this because when I read a book I want to search a word's meaning and save where I found it. Type a word and you get a dictionary card: meaning, usage, history, and alternative meanings. Save it with a tag — the book's title, an article, wherever it came from — and the Saved page groups your words by tag with counts. Review mode shows them back one card at a time.

Related words, synonyms and word roots are clickable links, and every lookup is cached in a local sqlite file, so wandering from word to word stays fast. There are no accounts and no API keys; it talks to free dictionary sources (dictionaryapi.dev and Wiktionary) and keeps one file of your data.

Preview

| Search | Saved | Review | |---|---|---| | | | |

Run

Needs Docker and nothing else:

docker compose up -d --build
# → http://localhost:8737

The compose build context points at this repository, so --build always clones and builds the latest master — your local checkout isn't required (to build local changes instead, temporarily set build: .).

Or without Docker (Node ≥ 22.5, for node:sqlite):

npm install
npm run build
npm start          # PORT=8737 node dist/index.js

npm run dev runs via tsx without a build step; npm run selfcheck runs the assert checks (--live to exercise the real APIs).

CLI

The same thing from your terminal — no clone needed:

npm i -g @krocosr/vocab

vocab banality            # look up a word
vocab save banality -t "king in yellow"
vocab list                # saved words (vocab list king in yellow to filter)
vocab tags                # tag counts
vocab rm banality
vocab review              # interactive reveal-card pass

Words are stored at ~/.vocab/vocab.db. From a repo checkout, npm link puts vocab on your PATH and shares data/vocab.db with the server instead.

Notes

• Your data is data/vocab.db — one table that doubles as lookup cache and saved list. A *.bak snapshot is written on every server start; back that folder up and you keep everything.
• Needs internet at runtime (the free dictionary APIs); no word database is bundled.
• "Purpose" is assembled from part of speech, examples and synonyms — free dictionaries have no literal "purpose" field.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.