Chapter digests

A chapter digest is an AI-generated summary of one chapter, with key points and comprehension questions. Read it before the chapter to skim, that is, to find out what the chapter contains. Or read it after the chapter as review.

Crossbill generates digests from the book’s EPUB file, so the book needs its file uploaded.

Generating a digest

Open a book’s Structure tab. It shows the chapters as a tree. Each chapter shows its highlight and flashcard counts, whether you have read it, and its gist if you wrote one.

• To generate a digest, open a chapter and choose Generate summary. The summary and key points appear in the chapter with the date they were made.
• To replace a digest, choose Regenerate.
• To generate digests for the whole book, choose Generate summaries for all chapters. The tab shows the progress, and you can cancel the run.

Whole-book generation runs in the background worker, so you can close the page while it runs.

The Structure tab also has a semantic search field. It shows the chapters whose digest matches your search.

Using a digest

• The key points are a short bullet list.
• Each comprehension question has an answer box. Your answer saves when you click outside the box.
• You can quiz yourself on the chapter or chat about it with the AI.
• You can make a note or a flashcard from the same chapter view.

The KOReader plugin can download digests to your e-reader, so you can read them next to the chapter.

AI providers

Crossbill supports Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic and Gemini. Set the provider with AI_PROVIDER and its API key. The AI features appear in the app only after you set a provider.