  Far-ultraviolet (FUV; ~1200-2000 angstroms) spectra are fundamental to our
understanding of star-forming galaxies, providing a unique window on massive
stellar populations, chemical evolution, feedback processes, and reionization.
The launch of JWST will soon usher in a new era, pushing the UV spectroscopic
frontier to higher redshifts than ever before, however, its success hinges on a
comprehensive understanding of the massive star populations and gas conditions
that power the observed UV spectral features. This requires a level of detail
that is only possible with a combination of ample wavelength coverage,
signal-to-noise, spectral-resolution, and sample diversity that has not yet
been achieved by any FUV spectral database.
  We present the COS Legacy Spectroscopic SurveY (CLASSY) treasury and its
first high level science product, the CLASSY atlas. CLASSY builds on the HST
archive to construct the first high-quality (S/N_1500 >~ 5/resel),
high-resolution (R~15,000) FUV spectral database of 45 nearby (0.002 < z <
0.182) star-forming galaxies. The CLASSY atlas, available to the public via the
CLASSY website, is the result of optimally extracting and coadding 170
archival+new spectra from 312 orbits of HST observations.
  The CLASSY sample covers a broad range of properties including stellar mass
(6.2 < logM_star(M_sol) < 10.1), star formation rate (-2.0 < log SFR (M_sol/yr)
< +1.6), direct gas-phase metallicity (7.0 < 12+log(O/H) < 8.8), ionization
(0.5 < O_32 < 38.0), reddening (0.02 < E(B-V < 0.67), and nebular density (10 <
n_e (cm^-3) < 1120). CLASSY is biased to UV-bright star-forming galaxies,
resulting in a sample that is consistent with z~0 mass-metallicity
relationship, but is offset to higher SFRs by roughly 2 dex, similar to z >~2
galaxies. This unique set of properties makes the CLASSY atlas the benchmark
training set for star-forming galaxies across cosmic time.
