trails
AI
llm book exploration
SHOW HN2026
How HN took it
17 positive, 20 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 33 critical, out of 71 comments about the project. Thread score -0.15.
Idea: 10 for, 26 againstDesign: 2 for, 2 againstExecution: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Design and interface praised as inspiring
From 1 comment
You really know what a good interface should be like, this is really inspiring. So is the design of everything I've seen on your website! I won't pile on to what everyone else…
hecanjog on HN
Connections seen as creative and worthwhile by some
From 1 comment
This is really, really, good. Ignore the commenters in this thread who don’t see the connections. It takes a very high degree of artistic creativity and linguistic imagination to…
znnajdla on HN
Objections
Connections are superficial or spurious
From 3 comments
I dont understand the lines connecting two pieces of text. In most cases, the connected words have absolutely zero connection with each other. In "Father wound" the words…
smusamashah on HNThis feels like a nice idea but the connection between the theme and the overarching arc of each book seems tenuous at best. In some cases it just seems to have found one…
urbandw311er on HNI’m not surprised that it found connections when you told it to find connections. Most of those connections seem rather dubious to me. I think you’d have been better off coming…
nkrisc on HN
Labels like Thanos fraud under useful lies seem mislabeled
From 1 comment
Can someone break this down for me? I'm seeing "Thanos committing fraud" in a section about "useful lies". Given that the founder is currently in prison, it seems odd to consider…
8organicbits on HN
Descriptions have distinct LLM-generated voice
From 1 comment
It’s interesting how many of the descriptions have a distinct LLM-style voice. Even if you hadn’t posted how it was generated I would have immediately recognized many of the…
Aurornis on HN
Outsourcing critical thought to a model undermines reading
From 2 comments
I don’t like this product as a service to readers (i.e., people who read as a cognitive/philosophical exploit) but I do think that somewhere embedded in its backend there are…
tolerance on HNThis is a beautiful piece of work. The actual data or outputs seem to be more or less...trash? Maybe too strong a word. But perhaps you are outsourcing too much critical thought…
drakeballew on HN
Requests
Explain the design and UI approach
From 1 comment
You really know what a good interface should be like, this is really inspiring. So is the design of everything I've seen on your website! I won't pile on to what everyone else…
hecanjog on HN
Share the tech stack details
From 1 comment
Do you have details of the tech stack? Really loved it..
froil on HN
Improve prompting with multiple passes
From 1 comment
This feels like a nice idea but the connection between the theme and the overarching arc of each book seems tenuous at best. In some cases it just seems to have found one…
urbandw311er on HN
Questions
What meaningful insight do the connections give
From 1 comment
What meaningful connections did it uncover? You have an interesting idea here, but looking over the LLM output, it's not clear what these "connections" actually mean, or if they…
timoth3y on HN
Where did the Leiden partitioning approach come from
From 1 comment
Where did you come across Leiden partitioning? I’m facing a similar use case and wonder what you’re reading.
threecheese on HN
Where were the books sourced from given copyright
From 1 comment
Wow! Amazing! Have you read the Syntopicon by Mortimer J Adler? It's right up your alley on this one. It's essentially this, but in 1965, by hand, with Isaac Asimov and William F…
Balgair on HN
Alternatives named
Mortimer Adler's Syntopicon
From 2 comments
Wow! Amazing! Have you read the Syntopicon by Mortimer J Adler? It's right up your alley on this one. It's essentially this, but in 1965, by hand, with Isaac Asimov and William F…
Balgair on HNNice! I've been using Claude Code and ChatGPT for something similar. My inspiration is Adler's concept of The Great Conversation and Adler's Propædia. I've been able to jump…
guidoism on HN
Distant reading in digital humanities
From 1 comment
I read a book maybe a decade ago on the "digital humanities". I wish now I could remember the title and author. :( Anyway, it introduced me to the idea of using computational…
pxc on HN