A self-building bookshelf of generated explainers.
Point Claude Code at any GitHub repo + a subsystem, and it writes a narrated, animated O'RLY-parody "book" — then ships it to the shelf.

▶ Watch the explainer that explains this repo

ORLY Loop → — a book the shelf generated about itself: open an issue → Claude Code builds the book → a preview PR → @claude tweaks → you merge → it's live. The fastest way to understand this project is to watch it.

Live shelf: https://orly.brett-lamy.workers.dev/

Each book is a narrated, animated data-flow explainer of one subsystem of some codebase:

• A multi-chapter D3 slideshow — nodes and edges that build up over time, animated message packets, a camera that frames each step.
• Narration by ElevenLabs, with slides synced to the audio via exact per-character TTS timestamps.
• An O'RLY-parody cover — a gpt-image woodcut animal (text-rejecting QA loop), composited in-browser with the title/author and skewed onto a 3-D book on the shelf.
• Grounded in real code — the storyboard step cites real files/functions; nothing is invented.

There are 8 books on the shelf today, including a whole Effect.ts — The Good Parts series.

You never edit files to add a book. You open an issue, and CI does the rest:

flowchart LR
  issue["📋 GitHub issue<br/>new-book · new-series · tweak"] --> ci["⚙️ GitHub Actions<br/>new-book.yml"]
  ci --> claude["🤖 Claude Code in CI<br/>digest → storyboard → narrate → cover → icons"]
  claude --> pr["🔀 Pull request<br/>(stays open)"]
  pr --> preview["☁️ Cloudflare preview<br/>*.workers.dev link"]
  preview -. "💬 reply @claude &lt;change&gt;" .-> claude
  pr --> merge["✅ you merge"]
  merge --> deploy["🚀 Cloudflare Workers + R2"]
  deploy --> shelf["📚 the shelf"]

1. Open an issue from a template (📕 new book, 📚 new series, ✏️ tweak). Anyone can file one; it only runs for the repo owner — when you open it, or apply the build label. Re-labeling re-runs it.
2. Claude Code runs in CI, follows the matching playbook in .claude/commands/, and runs the generator end to end.
3. A pull request opens (and stays open) with a live Cloudflare preview commented right on it.
4. Reply @claude <change> on the PR to revise the book — it edits the branch, pushes, and the preview redeploys. As many rounds as you like.
5. You merge — the one deliberate manual step — and it deploys to Cloudflare Workers.

Fork the repo, add a handful of secrets, and the same loop builds your collection.

Then open a 📕 New book issue on your fork and watch the preview PR appear. That's it.

Hosting: the shelf is a static-asset Cloudflare Worker (wrangler.jsonc), served from the domain root. deploy.yml ships main to production; preview.yml ships every book PR to a *.workers.dev preview. (Media — MP3s + covers — is bundled today; serving it from R2 object storage is on the roadmap.)

Beyond the issue flow, you can drive the generator from your machine:

npm install            # also installs the git pre-commit hooks
npm run dev            # http://localhost:5173/  (the shelf)

# generate a book (or run /new-book inside Claude Code):
npm run explain -- --repo https://github.com/koajs/koa \
                   --prompt "how a request flows through the middleware onion" \
                   --title "Koa.js" --open

Keys live in a gitignored .env (OPENAI_API_KEY, ELEVENLABS_API_KEY, NOUN_PROJECT_KEY/SECRET). The storyboard is written by Claude Code, so no Anthropic API key is required. See generator/README.md for the full pipeline, and .claude/commands/ for the playbooks.

generator/   the pipeline (npm run explain)
  repo.mjs · storyboard.mjs · validate.mjs (layered layout) · tts.mjs (ElevenLabs)
  cover.mjs + seeds.mjs (gpt-image + vision QA) · noun.mjs + iconize.mjs · transform.mjs
apps/bookshelf/           the deployable Vite + React workspace
  src/library/            the iBooks-style shelf (canvas 3-D books)
  src/player/             the audio-synced explainer player
  src/viz/                the timeline scenes and visualization engine
packages/mobile-ui/       reusable mobile chrome and indexed-list components
public/generated/<slug>/   each book's manifest.json + audio/ + animal.png
  library.json             the shelf registry
.github/workflows/         deploy · new-book · preview · comment-edit · test-pipeline

Tech: Vite · React · D3 · Framer Motion · Cloudflare Workers · ElevenLabs · OpenAI gpt-image · The Noun Project · GitHub Actions · Claude Code.

Icons via The Noun Project (CC BY). Covers are an "O'RLY?" parody — this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by O'Reilly Media, and never renders the real publisher name.

Built with Claude Code using GitHub Actions workflows.

MIT © Brett Lamy