This Library doesnt exist is a collection of books generated by AI. from a 45,000 word fantasy epic to a zaney childrens adventure, the library contains a wide range of genres and styles.

I have always found the idea of creating something that creates something to be interesting, and so AI felt like the next logical step. The idea was to create a framework where I had little to no control over the output, and see what would happen.

The site is split into two parts. A local app that generates the books, and a public site that displays them. The generation is almost entirely handled by AI. The only human input is the initial prompt, which is suggested by AI but can be edited. After that a reasoning model is used to determine the structure of the book, and then then image generation makes the cover and a regular LLM is used to write the chapters. (cursor was also used in the creation of this project)

I struggled with how to approach laying out the website. Each book has a large amount of interesting data, from writing styles to tones and even a 'north star' principle. In the end I stripped all of that away from the user experience and just focused on the content.

I also experimented with using a EPUB reader embeded into the website. This was an interesting challenge, but in the end I realised it didnt benefit the user experience and so it was removed. In its place I provide a link for the use to download the EPUB if they would like to use an e-reader.

After seeing how much my partner would visit my previous codepen experiment with Nonograms on codepen, I thought it was time to upgrade. Using Next, vercel, postgres and Auth0 I created a platform for her to be able to create and rank new puzzles, with her fastest time being persisted to a database for each one.

I also played around with Next themes to create, not only a light and dark mode but also custom themes that can easily be added to.

As a professional front-end developer of almost 10 years, it's odd I've never had my own personal website. I'm usually too lost in a project and would rather be exploring something new. However, the increase in popularity of server-side rendering has given me a great excuse to finally have a reason to tackle my own site.

Next.js and React 18 make for an interesting deviation from my usual client-side forte. The technical differences are fairly apparent, but I think the headspace of thinking in terms of keeping things server-side is more nuanced and hard to get used to. This is especially true when all your usual React comforts are there within easy reach with nothing stopping you. When you hit a problem or a suggestion from Next's surprisingly helpful builder, it's easy to take the quick fix and implement the client-side solution. I think so far I've managed to avoid temptation, and this site should be completely static... famous last words.