Library Hub
Turn your books in Calibre, Kavita, Audiobookshelf, Hardcover, Komga or Calibre-Web into notes. Read them, shelve them, summarize every chapter.
Library Hub is one of a family of plugins. Model Hub holds the AI keys it writes summaries with, and Topic Map finds the topics your books and notes share.
Shelves across Obsidian, Calibre and Audible, as an Obsidian plugin over the shelf engine.
A note for every book
Your library lives in Calibre and your thinking lives in Obsidian, and the two don't meet. Library Hub makes one note per book, with its cover, its shelves, a summary and a link to each chapter's notes. Your own writing in the note is left alone.
Books / Library / On the Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species
- tags
- book
- author
- Charles Darwin
- published
- 1859
- formats
- ebook
- reading_status
- reading
- shelves
- Natural History, Voyages
- calibre_id
- 214
Summary
Darwin argues that species are not fixed but descend, with change, from earlier forms. He starts from the breeder's yard: pigeons and dogs changed greatly under human choice…
Chapters
- I. Variation under Domestication
- II. Variation under Nature
- III. Struggle for Existence
- IV. Natural Selection
- … 11 more
My notes
Yours. Library Hub never writes here.
This book
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin · 1859
What it does for you
My books live in Calibre. Library Hub is how they got into my notes, and how I read, sort and summarize them now.
A summary, then notes on every chapter
This is the part I use most. Ask for a one-page summary and it's written from the book's own text, usually for a few cents. Or ask for chapter notes: each chapter gets a note of its own with the main points, quotes, how it links to the rest of the book, what it cites, and a fuller account. A quote is kept only if it's in the book word for word. A whole shelf, or a book's chapter notes, shows you an estimate before anything is spent.
Books / Library / Walden / 01 Economy
Economy
Walden — by gemini-2.5-flash · 2026-10-21 · from the book's text
Important Points
- Most people spend their lives working to pay for things they don't need.
- Thoreau builds his own house by Walden Pond and lists every cost: $28.12½.
- The true cost of a thing is the life you give up to get it.
Notable Quotes
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
"the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it"
Connections
Sets up the experiment the rest of the book reports on; "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For" gives its reasons.
References
Confucius, the Bhagavad Gita, Chapman…
Full Depth
Thoreau opens by answering his townsmen's questions about his life in the woods…
Shelves that are just notes
Make a shelf by hand, from a sentence describing it, or by splitting a subject that's grown too big. A shelf is a note, and each book note lists its shelves, so Bases and search see them too. The Shelf view shows a shelf as covers. Library Hub also points out shelves that look like the same shelf twice.
Books / Shelves / Sea Stories
Sea Stories
SummaryVoyages under sail: whalers, merchant ships and a naturalist's five years at sea.
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851
Two Years Before the Mast
R. H. Dana · 1840
The Voyage of the Beagle
Charles Darwin · 1839
Typee
Herman Melville · 1846
Books that belong together
Add Topic Map and it reads each book and learns the topics it covers. Library Hub then relates your books by those topics, not by the words they happen to use. Similar books lists the others on a book's subject. Library Hub suggests the shelves a book suits, and offers each new book the shelves it fits. A living shelf takes in new books that match it. Shelf health checks each shelf by what its books are about, with trims and splits you review. On its own, Library Hub relates books by the words they share.
Read in Obsidian
Open an EPUB, AZW3, MOBI or PDF in a tab from its note, and it remembers your place. Select a passage to keep it as a highlight in a note for the book, with a link back to the spot. The link still finds its words after a book is converted to another format.
Chapter 1
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighborhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.
"My dear Mr. Bennet," said his lady to him one day, "have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?"
Fix a book's details before they reach Calibre
Library Hub reads a book's first pages and checks Open Library and Google Books, then shows you what it would change. Accepted changes go to Calibre one at a time, checked against what was there, and each one can be undone.
Moby Dick
From the book's first pages, Open Library and Google Books. Nothing reaches Calibre until you accept it.
A reading list
Mark a book want to read, up next, reading, read or set aside. The queue is a plain numbered note you can reorder by hand. Set a reading goal, and at the end of the year you get a year-in-review note.
New books, and books you don't have yet
Drop new files in a folder and they go through one pass you review: into Calibre, a note, the details, a cover. Grow a shelf suggests books that fit it, checks each in Open Library, and keeps the ones you don't own as a wishlist. Nothing is downloaded.
Your library for your agents
Through Model Hub, the chat and the coding agents you connect there can look up a book, list and change shelves, open a book at a passage, and write a summary. Looking things up runs without asking; every change asks you first and can be undone.
Under the hood: each operation is a tool with a JSON-schema input, registered with Model Hub's tool registry. Other plugins read books, chapters and shelves through getLibraryHub(). Technical details →
Where your books come from
Calibre is the heart of it. Library Hub reads your library through Calibre's Content Server, which you turn on in Calibre. The others are optional: turn one on and its books join the same notes. A book you own in Calibre and on Audiobookshelf gets one note, with both formats on it.
- Calibre
- Your main library, through its Content Server. The only source Library Hub ever writes to, and only the changes you accept.
- An OPDS catalog
- Calibre-Web, Kavita, Komga and other servers that publish one. Read‑only.
- Audiobookshelf
- Audiobooks and ebooks from your own server, with listening progress. Read‑only.
- Hardcover
- Your statuses, ratings and dates, and your want-to-read list. Read‑only.
- Readwise
- Your highlights from Kindle and other readers, in each book's highlights note. Read‑only.
- Writing backLater
- Status, rating and dates out to Hardcover; listening progress to Audiobookshelf.
- Calibre shelvesSoon
- Your shelves as a Calibre column, and as virtual libraries.
- AudibleLater
- Your Audible library and listening progress. Audible has no public API, so this needs care first.
Library Hub never holds an AI key. Every model call goes through Model Hub, so summaries land in the same receipts as everything else, under the limits you set there.
Money and data, plainly
- Library Hub is free, and staying free.
- Summaries and chapter notes run on the models you set up in Model Hub, and your provider bills you for them. With a local model, the book's text never leaves your computer.
- A summary sends the book's text to your provider. A details lookup sends its first pages. Covers and lookups send a title, author and ISBN to Open Library, and to Google Books if you add a key.
- Calibre changes only when you accept a change. Every run, in your notes or in Calibre, can be undone.
- I get nothing from you: no telemetry, no account, no ads.
Things to try
Start with these in Library Hub.
Library Hub needs Model Hub for its models. Add Topic Map too and it learns what your books are about, so similar books, shelf suggestions and the library map all work by topic.
Your AI keys once, for every plugin, with the receipts.
The topics your notes and books share.
What it can't do yet
- It's desktop only.
- There's no Kindle source: Amazon has no public Kindle API. Readwise brings your Kindle highlights in.
What I'm building next
Library Hub turns the books in your Calibre library into Obsidian notes you can read, shelve and summarize.
Built so far: a note for every book; a summary, then notes on every chapter; shelves that are just notes; books that belong together; reading in Obsidian; fixing a book's details before they reach Calibre; a reading list; new books, and books you don't have yet; and your library for your agents.
Soon
- Your shelves on the map. With Topic Map, the library map shows each book's shelves, reading status and cover, and you can pick out books on it and add them to a shelf.
- Ask a book. Ask about a passage and get an answer that quotes the book word for word, saved under your highlight.
- Kobo highlights. Your highlights from a Kobo come into each book's highlights note, the way Readwise brings in Kindle's.
- Your shelves in Calibre. Your shelves show up in Calibre as a column and as virtual libraries.
Later
- A tidier library. See the volumes you're missing from each series, and check every book's details against the web in one sweep you review.
- Writing back. Your status, rating and dates go out to Hardcover, and your listening progress to Audiobookshelf.
- Audiobooks. Several audiobook providers, joined to the same library and notes.
- Listen and export. Listen to a summary, leave voice notes on highlights, and turn a book's notes and highlights into an EPUB for Calibre.
- A best-in-class reader. A full-featured reader in Obsidian that ties into your notes, shelves and topic maps, for context from across your library, including paths from one subject to the next.
- Mobile. Your book notes, shelves and reading list on a phone or tablet.
Get it running
You need desktop Obsidian 1.13.1 or later, Model Hub with one provider, and Calibre. Both plugins are in Obsidian's community directory.
- Open Settings → Community plugins and select Browse. Search for Model Hub, then Library Hub, and select Install and Enable for each.
- Add a provider in Settings → Model Hub.
- In Calibre, turn on the Content Server: Connect/share → Start Content server.
- Open Settings → Library Hub → Library and select Sync… to see every note before it's written. The whole run can be undone.
Curious how it works inside? Start with Technical details →. Building a plugin that reads books? I've written Developer docs → for you and Agent docs → for your coding agent, with an llms.txt it can read.
Join
One list for everything here: an email when a plugin ships, plus the posts I write about these projects on brianspringer.com.
Want to help build this, or join the co‑op? Email me about joining →
Insurgent Methods is where we build at a different scale, to take on the biggest problems.
- Needs
- Obsidian 1.13.1, desktop
- Also
- Model Hub and Calibre