I haven't use Calibre in several years. What does it use AI for?

A good usecase for LLMs with an option to use local models?

Better remove it.

It’s 1 readme commit. It should say, “an aspiration to modify Calibre”

The only difference is the README.

The AI integration in question, from the Calibre changelog:

- Allow asking AI questions about any book in your calibre library.

- Right click the "View" button and choose "Discuss selected book(s) with AI"

- AI: Allow asking AI what book to read next by right clicking on a book and using the "Similar books" menu

- AI: Add a new backend for "LM Studio" which allows running various AI models locally

It seems pretty harmless really.

I understand some people feel that AI is overhyped and don't particularly like it, but this level of weird knee-jerk "anything AI is the devil incarnate" response is just as ridiculous, IMO.

From Calibre's repository README:

> Supports hundreds of AI models via Providers [...] no AI related code is even loaded until you configure an AI provider.

This fork is pretty much useless.

I had to look into the changelog to see what they meant but it’s not too intrusive IMO [1]. That being said, I find it way easier using calibre-web-automated [2]. Everything is through a web server, has usual control, and syncs with Kobo. All it takes in one docker compose and you’re up in less than 10 minutes.

[1] https://calibre-ebook.com/whats-new [2] https://github.com/crocodilestick/Calibre-Web-Automated

I personally think Goyal should focus on making Calibre’s UI less unpleasant before adding yet another bolted-on AI chat textbox, but this doesn’t feel very productive or useful.

Post this when a release is made. Currently this fork doesn't have any commit (beyond stating the intention of the fork without explaining why) and it is useless.

As best I can tell Goyal started adding AI-related code to Calibre back in August, merging the LLM tab work from https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre/pull/2838, and created the chat widget in November with commit 41d0da4267dc6f7f7e48fb9bb7e8609a2e251cb7.

I looked at forking the project myself: the challenges are that it's a very quirky application, its design and implementation doesn't share conventions with any other application, and the build system is complex and unique to Calibre.

It's a shame there's no good open source ebook library application with a more conventional design. Shoving AI into everything, even when it defaults to "off" (for now), is getting old.