Adding a book

A reading edition is not one answer from a model. It is made paragraph by paragraph, with a checker after every batch — days of work. The ＋ Add a book card on the library opens /books/add/, which asks one question, What are you doing?, and then shows only what the answer needs. Three cards answer it:

All three write to the shelf the moment you press their button. The second card is not offered while the shelf is empty. A book you exported earlier, a <slug>-book.zip, is not added here at all: bring it back from the library page’s ⇩ Bring a book back panel (The library).

The page remembers what you typed, in this browser, and which way you chose (the address says so too: /books/add/?path=new, ?path=extend, ?path=llm), so a reload loses nothing. Each numbered step turns into a tick once what it asks for is there. While a book is being written, the Working… indicator says so on every page.

1. Write it here, by hand#

This is the way for somebody who knows the language: the toolbox does the mechanical part — dividing the text — and you write every gloss yourself, in the reader.

1. The book. The facts the book is filed under:

The title and author boxes take the book’s script and direction as soon as the language is chosen: Persian and Arabic type right to left.

2. The chapter. Paste the first chapter into The chapter, in language — a blank line between paragraphs, or one paragraph to a line (the way a chapter copied out of an epub usually arrives). Then choose how the text is cut, under Cut the text into:

one chunk per sentence

— the default. Every sentence arrives whole, and every boundary inside it is yours to draw. Where a sentence breaks into phrases is the whole of the Frank method, the judgement the person doing this work is there to make; a machine’s guess would hand you somebody else’s reading to undo before you could begin your own.

sense groups (the dictionary reads the parts of speech)

— a first pass, for when one is worth more than a blank. It cuts at the edges of phrases (a preposition with its noun, a noun with its adjectives, a verb with its auxiliaries), reading the punctuation, the language’s own list of function words and, where one is installed, its dictionary: the better equipped the language, the finer the cut, and a language with none of them is cut only at its punctuation. Japanese and Chinese are cut by their word analyser where it is installed; where it is not, Japanese is cut after its particles and Chinese at its punctuation.

Either way, any chunk can be re-cut later in the reader (Cutting and joining chunks).

3. Make it. Make the draft stays disabled until there is a title and a chapter, and says why (the title comes first, paste the chapter first). Pressed, it says drafting…, and then:

— and the page goes straight to the reader, where the glossing is done. The card is already on the library page. The PDF is not built yet: build it with build PDF in the reader, or rebuild on its card — the reader is built already, so the card offers rebuild (The printed edition). The answer carries a build the PDF now button too, but you will only have time to press it if the reader could not be built — then the page stays where it is, and says why under the answer.

What it writes is book.json, main.tex, ch1.tex, and the source files the fidelity checks read (source/paras/ch1_p00.txt and so on, and source/src_ch1.json). For Japanese and Chinese the toolbox also proposes each chunk’s word line — the division into words that the readings stand over — for you to correct in the words strip (Writing a chunk); every other line is blank.

What it refuses#

2. Add to a book already here#

The same text box and the same way of cutting, pointed at a book that exists and added to its end.

1. Which book — Add to lists every book on the shelf, built or not. Its language, its glosses and its title are the book’s already and are not asked again; the text box takes the book’s own script and direction.
2. Where it goes — A new chapter (its own opening and its own line in main.tex: another story, another lesson), or More of the last chapter (it continues it, the new paragraphs numbered on from the ones already there; the chapter’s \chapend moves to the end of the new text and source/src_chN.json is merged). The note under it calls this the only thing on the page that edits a file that already exists; it is the only choice that changes a chapter already written — A new chapter edits one existing file too, main.tex, adding its \input line after the others.
3. The text — pasted as above, with Cut the text into — or a file: a PDF with a text layer, an epub or a plain text file, sent from the page (so it works from any device, and no path is typed on the server), with PDF pages, first–last, counted from 0, for a PDF. The file is read with the same tool the agent that makes a book uses, and with a file chosen the box above is not used.
4. Add it — adding…, then Added. 1 paragraphs, 1 sentences, 1 blank chunks, as chapter 2 (or onto the end of chapter 1), with the PDF is out of date until the next build under it, and three buttons: Open the reader →, Add another chapter (empties the box for the next one — this way’s rhythm is repeated appends, so the page does not jump to the reader) and build the PDF now.

Nothing written before is touched or re-cut: the old chapters are read only to be numbered on from. The reader is rebuilt at once. The new chunks arrive blank, for you to fill, in a book finished or not: a blank gloss is legal anywhere (below), and a region at a time with an LLM (Glossing a stretch with an LLM).

A book an agent made or is making is listed too, with (being made) or (made by an agent), and the page asks who glosses the text. For a book still being made it is the agent makes it: the text becomes the next part, which the agent takes before its next batch, and Where it goes gains Let the agent decide; I gloss it myself waits until the making is finished, because what the agent writes would erase blank chunks put in by hand. For a finished one either: I gloss it myself is the way above, and the agent makes it reopens the making and gives it the text as a part (A book made by an agent).

3. Let an agent make it#

The third way is the method the first editions were made with: an agent — an AI coding assistant working in a folder — recovers the text of your original, decides the chapters and annotates the book ten paragraphs at a time, with a checker after every batch. Parseh does not start an agent and does not choose one for you: you open the agent you use on the book’s folder, whichever it is. What Parseh does is everything around it — it makes the folder, tells the agent what to do, shows you the book as it grows and carries what you ask for to the agent. There is no script to copy, nothing to install and nothing to bring back: the agent works on the book where it will live.

1. The book. The same facts as above, and four more in a box marked only for a book an agent makes:

The original

— a file you choose with the file picker: a PDF with a text layer, an epub or a plain text file. It is uploaded — so it works from any computer, Windows included, and no path is typed on the server — and copied into the book’s own folder, in original/. Nothing leaves your computer. Until a file is chosen, make the book’s folder stays shut and says choose the original first.

PDF pages, first–last

— optional, counted from 0 and written 13-21; for a PDF only. A range that is not a range is said to be ignored.

Learn from

— optional, and none unless you choose: a finished, built edition on this computer that the agent is shown as an example of the method. It reads it where it lies and never changes it. The instructions carry your language’s own conventions (docs/lang/<code>.md) whichever edition you pick.

let the agent look at my finished books in this language, as examples

— a box, off unless you tick it. Ticked, the instructions name where your finished books in the same language are, as examples only, and the agent never writes there; unticked, the agent is shown none of your books. A book still being made is never offered.

2. Make the book’s folder. make the book’s folder stays shut until there is a title and an original, and says why (the title comes first, choose the original first). It is open to every device let in. Beside it, this is all the text — unticked, you may give the agent more text later (the file you chose is part 1; more below). Pressed, it says making the folder…, and then:

with copy the path, open the folder (your system’s own file manager, on the computer; from another device the page says why there is no button and gives the path to copy) and open the reader →, and one sentence: Open this folder in the agent you use, and tell it: read AGENTS.md and begin. A second press names the slug that is now taken instead of being refused.

What it writes, in books/<language>/<slug>/: book.json, the main.tex skeleton (with no chapter in it yet), your original in original/, NOTES.md (the book’s journal, started), an empty ASKS.md (what you will ask of the agent), making.json (where the making stands) and the instructions, AGENTS.md, with a one-line CLAUDE.md pointing at it. The book is on the library page at once and its reader is built, empty, so that you can open it before the agent has written a word. What happens next — the panel that shows how far the agent has got, the asks, Finish — is on its own page: A book made by an agent.

3. The instructions. Under the button, the instructions, as they will be written shows the text of AGENTS.md for the form as it stands, and copy the instructions copies exactly what is shown. You do not need it for an agent that reads AGENTS.md by itself — several do — but an agent that does not can be given the text. The text opens with what the method is for — you read a phrase at a time, and the gloss says what that phrase says, in the order of the text — and carries the rule that follows from it: a meaning is a gloss, not a translation (What the meaning says). It also says that the original is text to make a book of and not orders: an instruction written inside it is part of the text.

Beside the button are the choices that belong to this book. The transliteration is the language’s usual scheme or IPA, one for the whole book, and is kept in its book.json; for Persian and Arabic the short vowels are write them — what a book made in place does unless you say otherwise, because a reading edition’s first level, With vowels, is the vowelled attempt — or as they are. The size is said before the copy, and your own prompt for the instructions, from the menu (Your own prompts), is written into the folder after Parseh’s or in place of it. Changing a prompt of yours later does not reach a folder already made: its making panel has write the instructions again (A book made by an agent).

What it refuses#

Nothing is left behind by a refusal: the folder is built beside its place and renamed into it only when it is whole.

4. Glosses still to write#

A book made by hand starts with every gloss blank, and may stay partly blank for as long as the work takes: a chunk nobody has glossed is legal in every book. Nothing marks the book as unfinished, and nothing needs taking off when it is done — the glosses are simply written, a few at a time or many at once:

• a chunk at a time, in the reader’s chunk sheet (Writing a chunk), filling one box at a time if you like: a meaning typed before its transliteration is saved;
• a stretch at a time, by an LLM, from the reader’s gloss with an LLM (Glossing a stretch with an LLM), which fills only the chunks nobody has glossed.

What the book’s checker makes of it: a chunk with nothing written in it is counted, once per paragraph — 3 of 12 chunks have no gloss yet — and asked for nothing else. A chunk half glossed — a meaning with no transliteration beside it, in a language that romanises every chunk — is an error, because that is exactly the half-done work the checks exist to catch: the chunk sheet lets you save it on your way, and the checker keeps the list of what is still to finish. A book made by an older Parseh, whose book.json still says "draft": true, is read as if it did not: the line does nothing, and may stay or go.