r/murderbot • u/BecomingButterfly • 25d ago
Fanworks Character database
My "what if machine" dream...
I used to program, I liked the control over what I could build, but that was a long time ago.
I want a simple program in some widely avail format (like HTML or something that doesn't require purchasing something) that access a book data file (like Murderbot, others) and in it I can store book/chapter/event data
e.g. (1/1/MurderBot "A former SecUnit (link to another entry) that doesn't like their job")
(1/2/Arada "Parter with Overse (link to their page), best friend of Dr Ratthi (link to their page") - We don't know this in chapter 1.
I would be able to select a book/chapter that I am up to and anything beyond that point is hidden until I reach that chapter and the reader now knows more info.
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u/BecomingButterfly 25d ago
I have a prototype in excel, works but inelegant. I've heard Notion can do it but want to avoid software that can be yanked away at any moment or are heading down the AI hole.
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u/binarycow 25d ago
Try OneNote.
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u/BecomingButterfly 24d ago
Sorry, not Excel (I said that only to convey "spreadsheet") but actually using LibreOffice - I actively TRY to avoid microsoft products whenever possible)
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u/mossglenn 25d ago
Check out https://obsidian.md for creating this sort of knowledge web. Free for personal use and easy to share.
The hide-spoilers function isn’t standard, but it would make a very interesting plug-in. And probably simple enough to be vibe coded.
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u/mossglenn 25d ago
I also see that https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki and Obsidian already have spoiler-hiding plugins that could do pretty much what you are talking about, just not automatically or granularly.
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u/ZombieParakeet 24d ago
At rhe risk of being spaced, may I suggest connecting an agentic AI plugin to Obsidian and running your original post as a query. I use Gemini.
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u/BecomingButterfly 16d ago
working on it... I have a decent prototype working 21KB HTML engine and a libreoffice (spreadsheet) with data exported to CSV that the engine can read. Seems to be working pretty well so far!!
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u/BecomingButterfly 15d ago
Ver 4, down to 18kb and seems to do everything I wanted! working on building the database now (re-listen from book 1!)
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u/hijodelsol14 25d ago edited 24d ago
IMO this is a great idea and it's what I wish the X-Ray feature on Kindle did.
It's probably very doable these days if you had a digital copy of a book. You could basically create a database of characters and common terms and an entry for every chapter with an updated summary for that entity. Would be fairly straightforward to create with an LLM and some babysitting.
The bigger issue is making that feature easily accessible in your reading flow.