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Spanish/Conjuga/Scripts/books/README.md
Trey T 3ee1563cb0 Books — pre-computed per-book glossary for context-correct word lookup
The book reader's word lookup used DictionaryService, a verb-conjugation
index plus ~200 hand-typed words: ordinary nouns like "taza" returned
nothing, and homographs always lost (tapping "como" in "como siempre"
gave the verb "comer" because the verb index is checked first).

Add a glossary phase to the books pipeline (build_glossary.py): every
distinct Spanish word is translated once, in its sentence context, by
the same Claude-Code-subagent LLM step the pipeline already uses for
chapter translation. English front matter is excluded by an ES==EN
paragraph-ratio heuristic. The glossary is bundled into book_<slug>.json
and is now part of the pipeline for every book.

In the app, Book carries the decoded glossary and BookReaderView resolves
each tap automatically through cache -> glossary -> DictionaryService ->
on-device LLM, citing which source answered so a curated glossary hit
reads differently from a best-effort AI guess.

book_olly-vol2.json regenerated with a 3,658-word glossary.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-05-18 10:44:32 -05:00

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Books pipeline

Turns any EPUB into a chapter-structured JSON file the app bundles and reads.

TL;DR

cd Conjuga/Scripts/books
./run.sh /path/to/book.epub --slug my-book-slug

This runs Phase 1 (extract) and Phase 2 (manifest jobs), then stops and tells you how many translation jobs are pending. Run those via Claude Code subagents (Phase 2.5 below), then re-run ./run.sh to bundle the final file.

Phases

Phase Script What it does Output
1 extract_epub.py Unzip the EPUB, walk content.opf spine + toc.ncx navMap, group HTML files into chapters, strip HTML→text. build/<slug>/chapters.json
2 translate_chapters.py Split each chapter into ~30-paragraph translation batches. Each batch becomes a job with its own input/output file. Resumable: jobs whose output file already exists are skipped. build/<slug>/jobs/<jobid>.input.json + _pending.txt
2b build_glossary.py Tokenize every Spanish paragraph the same way the app does, collect the distinct words with example sentences, split into ~150-word glossary batches. Resumable the same way. build/<slug>/glossary/<jobid>.input.json + _pending.txt
2.5 Claude Code subagents Drain both manifests: translate the chapter jobs and the glossary jobs, writing each job's <jobid>.output.json. See "Running translations" below. build/<slug>/{jobs,glossary}/<jobid>.output.json
3 bundle_book.py Merge chapters.json + every translation *.output.json + every glossary *.output.json into the final bundled JSON the app reads. Conjuga/Conjuga/book_<slug>.json

run.sh chains 1 → 2 → 2b → 3. If Phase 2 or 2b produces pending jobs, Phase 3 still runs but bundles with placeholders so you can preview app structure before the LLM passes complete. Re-running run.sh after subagents fill in the outputs gives you the real bundled file.

The glossary is the book reader's primary word-lookup source: every distinct word translated once, in context, so taps are instant, cover the whole book, and don't mis-resolve homographs (e.g. "como" as the conjunction vs. the verb comer). This phase is a permanent part of the pipeline — every book imported this way gets a glossary.

Adding a new book

  1. Drop the EPUB anywhere on disk.

  2. Run Phase 1+2:

    cd Conjuga/Scripts/books
    ./run.sh /path/to/book.epub --slug my-book
    

    Sanity-check the chapter list it prints. If chapter grouping looks wrong (e.g. an EPUB without a usable toc.ncx), extract_epub.py will need a fallback heuristic — see "Open assumptions" below.

  3. Run translations (Phase 2.5). The default approach is to spawn Claude Code subagents from inside a Claude Code session pointed at this repo:

    There are two manifests to drain — translation and glossary:

    • build/<slug>/jobs/_pending.txt with prompt build/<slug>/jobs/_prompt_template.md
    • build/<slug>/glossary/_pending.txt with prompt build/<slug>/glossary/_prompt_template.md

    For each pending job ID, hand a subagent the matching prompt with <JOB_INPUT_PATH> / <JOB_OUTPUT_PATH> filled in. The subagent reads the input, produces the translation/glossary, and writes the output. Resumable — interrupted runs just leave the missing job IDs in _pending.txt.

    Cluster jobs into agent batches of ~510 jobs each to keep per-agent context manageable. ~5 parallel agents is a good throughput target.

  4. Bundle:

    ./run.sh /path/to/book.epub --slug my-book   # re-running pulls in the new outputs
    # or directly:
    python3 bundle_book.py my-book --require-all
    

    --require-all will fail loudly if any job is still missing.

  5. Bump bookDataVersion in DataLoader.swift so the in-app store re-seeds the new book on next launch (or any time you re-run with new translations).

  6. Verify the file is bundled in Conjuga.xcodeproj. The script writes book_<slug>.json into Conjuga/Conjuga/Resources/; if that folder is part of a recursive group reference, Xcode picks it up automatically. Otherwise, add it manually or via the xcodeproj ruby gem.

File layout

Conjuga/Scripts/books/
├── extract_epub.py        # Phase 1
├── translate_chapters.py  # Phase 2
├── build_glossary.py      # Phase 2b
├── bundle_book.py         # Phase 3
├── run.sh                 # Orchestrator
└── build/                 # gitignored
    └── <slug>/
        ├── chapters.json
        ├── jobs/                    # translation jobs
        │   ├── _pending.txt
        │   ├── _prompt_template.md
        │   ├── ch01_b00.input.json
        │   ├── ch01_b00.output.json
        │   └── ...
        └── glossary/                # glossary jobs (Phase 2b)
            ├── _pending.txt
            ├── _prompt_template.md
            ├── gloss_b00.input.json
            ├── gloss_b00.output.json
            └── ...

The final output (book_<slug>.json) lives at Conjuga/Conjuga/book_<slug>.json so the iOS app bundle includes it. (Existing textbook_data.json / conjuga_data.json use the same layout — files in the app target root rather than a Resources subgroup.)

Open assumptions

  • TOC drives chapter boundaries. If an EPUB ships without a usable toc.ncx, or the navMap is too granular (e.g. one navPoint per page), extract_epub.py will need a fallback that groups by <h1> headings in spine order.
  • Spanish bold tags = inline emphasis. The Olly Richards books bold vocab hints inside paragraphs. We strip the bold and let the in-app dictionary lookup handle definitions instead. If a future book uses bold for something else (titles, etc.), revisit.
  • Translation is per-paragraph 1:1. Subagents must preserve paragraph count and order. bundle_book.py will warn + pad/truncate if a job's output array length doesn't match its input — but that's a sign the subagent misbehaved.

Out of scope (intentional)

  • OCR of vocab image tables (use Scripts/textbook/ if your book is image-heavy).
  • Exercise extraction (textbook pipeline).
  • Per-occurrence word sense disambiguation. The glossary has one entry per distinct word, translated in context; a word genuinely used in two senses in the same book gets its dominant sense. The runtime DictionaryService + the on-device LLM remain as fallbacks for anything the glossary misses.
  • Cover image extraction (covers are derived from a color hash in the app for now).