This shelf is a small experiment with Jev, a new kind of AI model that makes quick decisions instead of writing text. Type anything after "Show me" and Jev will go through the whole shelf for you. Open any book to see what Jev makes of it, or gather a few and ask it for something new to read. How does this work?
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How does this work?
The books and my ratings come from the bookshelf on my website. Covers come from Open Library and Apple Books. The shelf itself was built with Claude Fable.
The interesting part is Jev, a System One model from TypeSafe. You ask it a typed question and it answers with a decision and a probability, usually in well under a second.
Here it does four jobs:
- When you open a book, Jev answers four questions about it, picked at random every time. Who is it perfect for? What superpower does it give you? Would it make a good film? Open the same book twice and you'll get a different set.
- It picks which of the suggested books are worth showing under "Books like this".
- It ranks the suggestions when you gather a few books and ask for more like them.
- When you type something after "Show me", it checks every book on the shelf against your words. That's 639 yes-or-no decisions, answered in about a second.
Jev can't come up with book titles on its own, so an agent running Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite suggests books I don't own yet, and Jev decides which ones make the cut.
The "New arrivals" ledge at the top runs by itself once a day. Each day starts from two of my favourite books picked at random. The agent suggests a dozen books in that spirit, Jev keeps the best five, and nothing it has shown before comes back. "Books like this" refreshes daily too, with a new set for each book.
Jev is brand new and sometimes gets things gloriously wrong. That's half the fun.