Hanzi Kawaii
Live
A Mandarin vocabulary app for the official HSK 3.0 list, levels 1 to 6. Short lessons of ten words with pinyin, meanings and five example sentences each, all read aloud. Trace characters stroke by stroke, train your ear, and let spaced repetition bring words back before you forget them. Coins from learning decorate a cosy village of rooms, gardens and pets. Meanings and the app itself come in English, Vietnamese, French, German, Spanish and Japanese.
- Status
- Live
- Category
- App
- Started
- Nov 2026
- Launched
- Nov 2026
- Stack
- React, TypeScript, Vite
- AI
- Claude Code, Claude API, MiniMax Speech
Hanzi Kawaii
Learn Chinese words the cute way: HSK lessons, stroke-by-stroke writing, real audio, and a little world you decorate with the coins you earn.
Story
Problem
Vocabulary apps tend to be either dry flashcard decks or games where the learning is an afterthought, and few give you real example sentences and audio for every word.
Idea
Cover the whole HSK 3.0 word list properly, with sentences, audio and handwriting, and wrap it in something cosy to come back to every day.
Solution
Ten-word lessons with a short practice drill, writing, listening and spaced review, where every bit of study earns coins for decorating your own little village.
Key features
- Over 5,000 words from the official HSK 3.0 list, levels 1 to 6, with tone-coloured pinyin
- Five graded example sentences for every word, all with natural read-aloud audio
- Stroke-by-stroke character writing with stroke order and an accuracy check
- Spaced-repetition reviews with flashcards, quizzes, listening and writing modes
- My World: decorate a room, garden, café and more, and collect 24 pets
- Daily streaks with freezes and milestones, plus daily, weekly and monthly leaderboards
- Meanings and interface in six languages
Screenshots
How it was built
The app is React and TypeScript, built to my own pastel mockups and wrapped with Capacitor for Android. The word list comes from the official HSK 3.0 list and open dictionaries; Claude wrote five graded example sentences and short meanings for every word in six languages, and MiniMax Speech voiced more than 34,000 audio clips.
The game rules (scheduling, rewards, streaks, shop) are plain, tested TypeScript with no screen code. Leaderboards run on a small Cloudflare Worker with a D1 database, and a nickname picker means there is no user-written text to moderate.
Claude Code wrote most of the code. Before release, a round of review agents checked the content, teaching approach, game economy, store rules and UI, and their findings were fixed.
Devlog
Streaks, leaderboards and a full review round, now on Google Play
Hanzi Kawaii gained daily streaks with freezes and milestones, leaderboards and learner profiles, and a practice drill at the end of every lesson after a round of expert reviews of the content, teaching and UI. The Android back button, a bigger writing canvas, flip flashcards and celebration sounds also landed, and the app is now available on Google Play.
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