Writer | Mandarin Stack

Pick a deck to add it to your library. Each deck is loaded from the app's own data and works offline. If you already have a deck with the same name, it will be replaced.

Decks & Lookup

The sidebar has two tabs:

Deck — create or load a list of entries to study. Each line is one card. A line can be a single character (e.g. 中) or a whole sentence (我是学生). Type/paste lines into the box, give the deck a name, and hit Save. Click a saved deck to start studying it; use the pencil to edit it or the trash to delete it.
Lookup — type a single character to instantly see its stroke order animation. Useful for quick one-offs without saving anything.

Studying a card

Auto-animate plays the stroke order as soon as the card loads.
Loop keeps the animation cycling.
Both toggles can be turned off if you want manual control — then use the button on a character to play once, or the button to practice by drawing strokes yourself.
The flip button on any character flips that card to show the hanzi, pinyin, and CC-CEDICT definition. Each character flips independently in a multi-character line.
Card fields (button under the playback toggles) opens a picker where you choose which extra fields appear in the panel below the stroke cards — pinyin, definitions (CC-CEDICT, AI, or your own), Chinese / English sentence, Chinese / English dialog, and a free-form Extra slot. Toggles are shared with Flashcards. Inside sentences and dialogs, the card's hanzi is auto-bolded.
Side by side shows every character in a multi-character line at once; one at a time walks through them.
Navigate with the on-screen arrows or the ← → keys.

Quick Lookup from other tools

The dictionary popover on stories, reader, and lessons has an Open in Writer action. It deep-links to /writer/?word=<character>, which drops the word into a transient Quick Lookup deck — useful for jumping straight from a story to stroke practice.

Preload deck offline

Stroke data for each character is fetched from the internet the first time you view it, then cached on your device. Preload deck offline grabs every character in the current deck up front so the whole deck works without a connection. Run it once while you're online; afterwards the deck is fully offline.

Prebuilt deck library

Import prebuilt deck opens the bundled library: the 100 most common radicals (the same list Skritter teaches from), a shufa / calligraphy practice set, every HSK 2.0 level (1–6), and every HSK 3.0 band (levels 1–6 plus the combined 7–9 advanced band). The library ships with the app, so it works offline once the page has loaded once.

Import / Export your own decks

Decks are stored in your browser's local storage, so they don't sync between devices automatically. Use:

Export — downloads every deck as a single writer-decks.json file.
Import — accepts three formats:
- A Writer JSON export (merges every deck inside).
- A plain text file (.txt) with one entry per line — you'll be prompted to name the new deck.
- A Pleco TSV file (.txt or .tsv) — only the first tab-separated column (the hanzi) is kept; same name prompt.

Comment lines starting with # are ignored. Existing decks with the same name are replaced.

Privacy

Everything — decks, cached strokes, settings — lives only in your browser's local storage. Nothing is sent to any server.

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