Visual input, with AI assistance
For learners who don't know the pronunciation yet, or any product without a pinyin keyboard: pick a stroke, narrow down by component and position, get the character. The widget on the right is calling the same public API your platform can call — this isn't a mockup.
Enter your API key (or start a free trial), then tap a stroke.
Read real Chinese: paste, photograph or speak it
Characters are the bricks; words and sentences are what you actually read. Paste any Chinese text (or your own language, a photo, or your voice): it is segmented into words with pinyin and English, every character opens into its components at their positions, and people and places in the text — including 5,000+ historical figures — get their own pages. Words not yet in the dictionary are glossed on the spot.
What the AI edition adds
Same engine and data as the stable version. Features below are switched on one by one; the stable page at visual-input.html is not affected.
① Learning from real use ● on
Each completed lookup (strokes tapped, parts chosen, the character picked, how long it took) is recorded anonymously — the raw material for the features below. No full text is stored.
② Part names & hints ● on
Hover or long-press a part to see its reading and a one-line memory hint (朿 cì vs 束 shù).
③ Stroke tolerance ○ planned
Tapped 丶 but meant 乀? When nothing matches, the engine suggests the stroke you probably meant, learned from real confusions.
④ Smarter candidate order ○ planned
Candidates ordered by what learners at your level actually pick, and by the text you are reading when a platform passes it in.
Call it directly
Same Bearer-key auth as the structural decomposition API, with an independent quota — it won't eat into your decompose usage.
curl https://api.chinesekey.org/v1/visual-input/components?strokes=h \ -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_live_..." curl https://api.chinesekey.org/v1/visual-input/positions?part=阝 \ -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_live_..." curl https://api.chinesekey.org/v1/visual-input/candidates?parts=阝@A02 \ -H "Authorization: Bearer pk_live_..."GET /v1/visual-input — full endpoint list & limits →