WordAtlas

WordAtlas builds interactive semantic maps from WordNet.

• CLI: list relations or export a Graphviz image (PNG/SVG/PDF)
• Web: FastAPI + Cytoscape.js interactive graph, with relation toggles, label and font controls, and layout presets

Install

• From PyPI (recommended):

pip install wordatlas

• From source (this repo):

pip install -e .

Optional dev extras:

pip install -e .[dev]

Note: For PNG/SVG/PDF rendering you need the system Graphviz tool.

Quickstart

# CLI — quick checks
wordatlas list happiness --depth 1 --json-out g.json   # write graph JSON
wordatlas show happiness --depth 1                     # compact summary

# CLI — query and export image
wordatlas graph happiness --depth 2 --out graph.png

# Web — start API/UI
wordatlas web --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000
# open http://localhost:8000/

CLI commands and flags

Commands:

• wordatlas list WORD — build the graph and print a relation summary table (or --json-out)
• wordatlas show WORD — print a compact JSON-like summary (center, counts, samples)
• wordatlas graph WORD — render a Graphviz image and optional CSV/JSON exports

Common flags:

• --depth INT — overall expansion depth (default from env; see Configuration)
• --max-nodes INT — cap total nodes in the graph
• --relation ... or -r ... (repeatable) — keep only selected edge types
• --rel-depth relation:INT (repeatable) — per-relation hop caps
  • Only relations you specify are constrained; others follow the overall --depth.
• --pos-cap POS:INT (repeatable) — cap nodes per POS (e.g., n:80 a:30)
• --exclude WORD (repeatable) — exclude words; --stopwords file.txt for a newline list
• --min-degree INT — drop nodes with degree less than N (center is kept)
• Rendering and exports:
  • --out PATH — output file (suffix .png/.svg/.pdf)
  • --format {png,svg,pdf} — override format regardless of --out suffix
  • --csv-out edges.csv — write source,target,relation
  • --json-out graph.json — dump graph JSON
  • --open — open the rendered image

Examples:

# Synonyms only, prune low-degree nodes, export CSV
wordatlas graph happy -r synonym --min-degree 1 --csv-out edges.csv --out g.svg

# Cap adjective nodes and limit hypernym depth
wordatlas graph bright --pos-cap a:5 --pos-cap n:50 --rel-depth hypernym:1 --out g.png

# Remove custom stopwords
wordatlas graph happy --stopwords stop.txt --exclude joyful

# Override format regardless of --out suffix
wordatlas graph run --out output.png --format pdf  # writes output.pdf

Web UI

• Sliders: label width and font size
• Layout presets: CoSE, Breadthfirst, Concentric, Grid

Tips:

• Click a node to recenter and rebuild the graph
• Use relation toggles to declutter specific edge types

REST API

The web UI uses these endpoints; you can call them directly.

• GET /api/health

  • Returns status, version, uptime, NLTK corpora status, and cache metrics.

  • Example:

    curl http://localhost:8000/api/health
    

• GET /api/graph

  • Params: word (required), depth (int), max_nodes (int), relation (repeatable)

  • Server-side relation filtering applies if one or more relation params are supplied.

  • Example:

    curl "http://localhost:8000/api/graph?word=happiness&depth=1&relation=synonym&relation=hypernym"
    

• POST /api/cache/clear

  • Clears internal LRU caches to free memory.

  • Example:

    curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/cache/clear
    

Relations supported

• synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms, antonyms, similar_to

Configuration

Environment variables:

• WORDATLAS_DEFAULT_DEPTH (int, default 1)
• WORDATLAS_MAX_NODES (int, default 300)
• LOG_LEVEL (str, default "INFO")

Caching and performance

• NLTK corpora (wordnet, omw-1.4) are downloaded automatically on first use.
• WordNet synset lookups are cached with an internal LRU cache.
  • Inspect via GET /api/health (cache metrics) and clear via POST /api/cache/clear.
• Use --relation filters, --rel-depth, --pos-cap, and --min-degree to keep graphs manageable.

Tests

pip install -e .[dev]
pytest -q

Development

# install dev deps
pip install -e .[dev]

# run the web app (live reload)
wordatlas web --reload

# or use Make targets
make install-dev
make test
make lint
make format
make typecheck

License

See LICENSE for full license text.

Acknowledgements

• WordNet by Princeton University