A personal library of the books that should exist — and a way to read them.

Curate a shelf of books that ought to exist but mostly don't. Browse the catalogue, star the ones you want, and when you grab a book Claude sits down and writes the whole thing — chapters, prose, and clean inline figures — for you to read right there in the terminal.

Part of the Fe₂O₃ Rust terminal suite. Built on crust (TUI) and glow (inline images). The phone reader is books in the nomad family — grab on the laptop, read anywhere over Syncthing.

A real library is full of books someone decided to write. This one is full of books you decide should exist. You describe your interests once; an acquisitions librarian (Claude, cheaply) stocks the shelves with enticing titles — broad surveys, niche deep-dives, and odd illuminating corners — mixing in real, actually-published books where they fit.

Nothing is written until you want it. Browsing an enormous catalogue costs almost nothing: each book is just a title, a shelf, and a one-line hook. The moment you grab one:

• a conjured book is written in full by Claude — 3–4 chapters for a focused read, or a longer deep dive — complete with simple SVG figures drawn to actually aid understanding;
• a real book is fetched from a legal source (Project Gutenberg full text where available), or given a rich reader's companion that points you to where to buy or borrow it.

Then you read it: a full-screen reader with chapter headings, pull-quotes, inline figures, adjustable width, highlight-a-phrase-for-a-definition, and a one-key "make this quick read into a proper book".

• Generative catalogue. Describe your interests; the shelves fill with books worth grabbing. Add more any time, focus a batch on a topic, search, star, and prune.
• Books written on demand. Grab a conjured title and Claude writes it in full, with figures, as Markdown — yours to keep under ~/.library.
• Real books too. Marked in gold, fetched from legal sources, never pirated.
• A proper reader. Full-screen, paginated, inline figures via kitty graphics, adjustable reading width, reading-progress.
• Highlight → definition. Select a word or phrase and get the meaning that fits this passage.
• Quick → deep. Turn a short read into a full-length book with one key.
• Syncs to your phone. Plain JSON + Markdown under ~/.library, so Syncthing mirrors it to the books reader.
• Cold when idle. The event loop blocks on input and only wakes while a generation is actually in flight — no polling, no idle drain.

Download a binary from Releases:

chmod +x library-*
mkdir -p ~/bin && mv library-linux-x86_64 ~/bin/library

Or build from source (clone alongside its Fe₂O₃ siblings):

cd ~/src
git clone https://github.com/isene/crust
git clone https://github.com/isene/glow
git clone https://github.com/isene/library
cd library && cargo build --release

• The claude CLI on your PATH (catalogue, book writing, definitions all run through claude -p).
• rsvg-convert (from librsvg) to rasterise figures.
• curl for fetching real books.
• A terminal with kitty graphics for inline figures (e.g. glass, kitty, or wezterm); text still reads fine without it.

library              # open the library TUI
library --seed       # first run: describe your interests, stock the shelves
library --more       # add more books in the spirit of the current shelves
library --list       # print the catalogue

Shelves

Reader

~/.library/
├── catalog.json                every book idea (metadata only)
└── books/<id>/
    ├── book.md                 the written text, with [[FIG n: caption]] markers
    └── img/figN.{svg,png}       the figures

Point a Syncthing folder at ~/.library to read everything on your phone with books.

Unlicense — public domain. Created by Geir Isene.