[GUI Plugin] Colophon - AI-assisted EPUB repair+proofreading (alpha, Calibre 9.5+)

jbennion · 06-26-2026, 12:14 PM

Hey everyone. For years I have been frustrated with typos and structural errors in EPUBs that break my reading flow. This is especially distracting with OCR'ed ebooks that have artifacts like extra ~ or numbers in words like Sm1th, etc., etc. Also, there are often broken structures like bad table of contents that make navigating books a problem.

As I searched, I couldn't find a single tool that incorporated fixing epub structure problems with proofreading to remove obvious errors in the actual text. These could be typos from poorly-edited novels I often read, or OCR artifacts that no one has time to read.

As I've learned more and more about LLMS, it's seemed to me that AI was a perfect use case for this. While I am an avid reader, I am not a coder. But it occurred to me I could have the AI's help me in two ways: 1-help me vibe-code an open-source GitHub project and 2-have LLMs read the books to help make sense of and correct obvious errors.

HOW YOU CAN HELP. There are two ways you can help! Right now the Calibre plugin is alpha, so I don't think it's ready to put in the Calibre plugin library yet, but it is on GitHub.

If you are a coder: help review the code, test the code, help me find problems and submit PRs to fix it!
If you are not a coder: If you're here, you're ALSO an avid reader. You can still help this project a TON by contributing epubs that have errors that we can use to improve the proofreading and structural fixes. So if you run it against a book and find there are typos or structural problems it doesn't fix but should be able to, submit that as a PR (bug report) or just reply below and we'll put it in the mix for trying to fix it. It's very early days!

Thanks everyone, here is the project:
https://github.com/JSBinSLC/colophon

JSWolf · 06-26-2026, 02:17 PM

But how can this AI fix the fomatting?

icallaci · 06-26-2026, 10:19 PM

Wow, this is a huge undertaking. You have my utmost best wishes. I am leery of mass search and replace because it can really mess things up, but I will take a look at your github project when I get some time.

rantanplan · 06-27-2026, 05:33 AM

When I install it via python venv, only the init.py is created. This doesn’t seem to install properly.

rantanplan · 06-27-2026, 05:36 AM

By the way, neither this project nor the other project from the day before yesterday have proper claude.md and agent.md.

06-26-2026, 12:14 PM	#1
jbennion Member Posts: 24 Karma: 17972 Join Date: Nov 2010 Device: Sony reader PRS-650	[GUI Plugin] Colophon - AI-assisted EPUB repair+proofreading (alpha, Calibre 9.5+) Hey everyone. For years I have been frustrated with typos and structural errors in EPUBs that break my reading flow. This is especially distracting with OCR'ed ebooks that have artifacts like extra ~ or numbers in words like Sm1th, etc., etc. Also, there are often broken structures like bad table of contents that make navigating books a problem. As I searched, I couldn't find a single tool that incorporated fixing epub structure problems with proofreading to remove obvious errors in the actual text. These could be typos from poorly-edited novels I often read, or OCR artifacts that no one has time to read. As I've learned more and more about LLMS, it's seemed to me that AI was a perfect use case for this. While I am an avid reader, I am not a coder. But it occurred to me I could have the AI's help me in two ways: 1-help me vibe-code an open-source GitHub project and 2-have LLMs read the books to help make sense of and correct obvious errors. HOW YOU CAN HELP. There are two ways you can help! Right now the Calibre plugin is alpha, so I don't think it's ready to put in the Calibre plugin library yet, but it is on GitHub. If you are a coder: help review the code, test the code, help me find problems and submit PRs to fix it! If you are not a coder: If you're here, you're ALSO an avid reader. You can still help this project a TON by contributing epubs that have errors that we can use to improve the proofreading and structural fixes. So if you run it against a book and find there are typos or structural problems it doesn't fix but should be able to, submit that as a PR (bug report) or just reply below and we'll put it in the mix for trying to fix it. It's very early days! Thanks everyone, here is the project: https://github.com/JSBinSLC/colophon

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06-26-2026, 02:17 PM	#2
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 83,921 Karma: 153649587 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	But how can this AI fix the fomatting?

06-26-2026, 10:19 PM	#3
icallaci Guru Posts: 831 Karma: 6528026 Join Date: Sep 2012 Device: Kobo Elipsa	Wow, this is a huge undertaking. You have my utmost best wishes. I am leery of mass search and replace because it can really mess things up, but I will take a look at your github project when I get some time.

06-27-2026, 05:33 AM	#4
rantanplan Weirdo Posts: 1,133 Karma: 12503116 Join Date: Nov 2019 Location: Wuppertal, Germany Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Libra 2, reMarkable PaperPro	When I install it via python venv, only the init.py is created. This doesn’t seem to install properly.

06-27-2026, 05:36 AM	#5
rantanplan Weirdo Posts: 1,133 Karma: 12503116 Join Date: Nov 2019 Location: Wuppertal, Germany Device: Kobo Sage, Kobo Libra 2, reMarkable PaperPro	By the way, neither this project nor the other project from the day before yesterday have proper claude.md and agent.md.

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