Modernized Classics

Public-domain classics rewritten into clear, modern English, and a site that publishes them: https://modernizedclassicsbooks.com

Source and contributions live in the public Modernized Classics repository.

This repo is two things:

• The site — an Astro project. Book content lives in src/content/books/<slug>/index.md; EPUBs are generated into public/downloads/.
• The pipeline (pipeline/) — turns a public-domain EPUB into a modernized book on the site with locally configured Claude, Codex, Gemini via AGY, or custom CLI commands. Each contributor uses their own model account; see provider setup.

Quick start (site)

Use Node.js 22.19+ (22.x), 24.x, or 26+ and npm 11.17.0. CI uses Node 22 and installs the pinned npm version before npm ci. Install scripts are explicitly allowed or denied in package.json; new scripts fail installation until reviewed.

npm ci
npm run dev        # http://localhost:4321
npm run build      # generates EPUBs, builds to dist/

Quick start (pipeline)

Requires an installed, authenticated model CLI. Claude is the default; set MODERNIZE_PROVIDER and MODERNIZE_MODEL to select another adapter. Provider setup covers CLI requirements, limitations, and custom wrappers.

npm run modernize -- pipeline/input/walden.epub --to select
#   → inspect pipeline/work/walden/selection.json, edit if the model picked wrong
npm run modernize -- --slug walden
#   → rewrite, QA, assemble, publish to src/content/books/walden/

Then drop a cover.png into src/content/books/walden/ (a generated cover-prompt.txt is waiting there), run npm run series-colors so the edition gets its colour from the cover, and run npm run build.

The site's visual system (tokens, type, the reading edition's apparatus) is recorded in DESIGN.md; read it before changing UI.

npm run modernize -- --help lists every option. --status shows progress for a book; re-running a command resumes wherever it stopped.

How the pipeline works

Everything is in pipeline/src. Prompts are plain Markdown in pipeline/prompts/. Stages call the shared model.ts interface; adapters in pipeline/src/providers/ translate that into CLI-specific requests and responses. Structured responses are validated centrally. Working state records the requested provider/model, prompt hashes and generation settings; configuration changes require an explicit restart rather than silently mixing output.

Stage	What it does	Model call
extract	Parses the EPUB, merges split files, writes a catalogue of every spine item	none
select	Chooses the author's chapters, excludes front/back matter and publisher notes, then cuts chapters into ~24k-char chunks at sentence boundaries	1 structured call
rewrite	Rewrites every chunk with the master prompt, with neighbouring context for continuity	1 per chunk, 4 in parallel
qa	Compares each rewrite to its source: dropped content, changed meaning, summarizing, stray commentary, internal-ID headings. Failing chunks are revised and re-reviewed up to twice, then flagged	1 per chunk + revisions
assemble	Stitches chunks into book.md, normalizes chapter headings, strips leftovers	none
publish	Generates frontmatter, writes src/content/books/<slug>/index.md and cover-prompt.txt, runs generate-epubs	1 structured call

Working files live in pipeline/work/<slug>/ (gitignored): the source EPUB, selection.json, chunks.json, one Markdown file per rewritten chunk, one JSON verdict per QA review, and state.json with progress and token usage. You can hand-edit any of these and re-run from a stage with --from.

Model costs depend on your CLI, account, model and input. Metrics unavailable from the provider are shown as unknown. Tests and the site build do not call models.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for book provenance, code changes, fork-based reviews, local checks, and contributor rights. Run npm run verify before submitting a change. This runs the file policy, type checks, tests, Astro checks, and a full site/EPUB build that must preserve the starting source tree. Generated EPUBs, source inputs and intermediate work are never committed.

This public repository contains the site source and deploys the live site through Cloudflare Workers Builds when main changes. Maintainers follow the release checklist before pushing to main.

Licenses

Code is MIT (LICENSE). The modernized texts are CC BY 4.0 (CONTENT-LICENSE.md). Source contribution guidelines are in SOURCES.md.