A lightweight, self-hosted EPUB reader that lets you read through EPUB books one chapter at a time. This makes it very easy to copy paste the contents of a chapter to an LLM, to read along. Basically - get epub books (e.g. Project Gutenberg has many), open them up in this reader, copy paste text around to your favorite LLM, and read together and along.
This project was 90% vibe coded just to illustrate how one can very easily read books together with LLMs. I'm not going to support it in any way, it's provided here as is for other people's inspiration and I don't intend to improve it. Code is ephemeral now and libraries are over, ask your LLM to change it in whatever way you like.
The project uses uv. Import a paper or book with the unified import.py CLI:
uv run import.py dracula.epub # EPUB
uv run import.py path/to/paper.pdf # PDF (via pymupdf4llm)
uv run import.py arxiv:1706.03762 # arXiv (prefers ar5iv HTML)
uv run import.py https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762
uv run import.py https://example.com/post.htmlEach call creates a *_data folder that registers the book to your local library. Then run the server:
uv run server.pyVisit localhost:5000 for your library. You can also import PDFs and EPUBs straight from the library page — hit Add document or drag a file onto the window.
The reader splits documents into sections at every H1/H2/H3, renders the whole document in one continuous scroll, keeps the TOC synced to the active section, and renders math with KaTeX (vendored into static/, so it works offline). You can grab the active section as markdown for your LLM with one keystroke. Press ? in the reader for the full shortcut list; the essentials:
| key | action |
|---|---|
j / k |
jump to next / previous section |
c |
copy current section as markdown (with provenance header) |
C |
copy entire paper |
y |
copy current selection (with provenance header) |
g |
fuzzy "go to section…" palette |
? |
shortcut help |
The right-hand Codex panel can explain highlighted text as you read. Set OPENAI_API_KEY before starting the server, or paste a key into the panel for the current server session. Set READER3_CODEX_MODEL to change the model (default: gpt-5).
Set READER3_LIBRARY=~/papers to point the server at a different library directory. The server binds to localhost by default; set READER3_HOST=0.0.0.0 only when you deliberately want to expose it. Delete a book with the trash icon on its library card, or by removing its *_data/ folder.
MIT