Skip to main content Pravendra Singh

Woodworking Has Been Achieved Internally

Short satire on the over-expressive interactive web experiments fueled by coding-agents.

Note
This post references a few publicly shared projects. They’re mentioned only as examples for the point I’m making, with no intention of diminishing the work behind them.

Have you ever felt jealous of a certain type of professional persona?

While it has evolved a few times, at one point, my answer was technical folks who also know woodwork.

There used to be a time when folks posting about “bookshelf” on a blog meant someone had spent hours cutting wood and breathing its dust. I’m pretty sure the dust must have gone into their clothes or even hair.

You could admire the r/bookshelf subreddit for hours in reciprocation of their love of craft.

Today, I don’t feel the same way; my jealousy for that archetype has gone away.

Why should I care when I can handcraft vibe code my own bookshelf?

Handcrafting your own bookshelf

Hell, even you can do that. Let me walk you through the steps.

It’s simple enough that we might just do it in single-pass one-shot.

We will explore a few ideas/dimensions of making your own bookshelf. All you need is some wood tokens and a working saw or chisel coding-agent.

For starters, how about a Kanban Board for your books? This can be perfect for the days when you are missing some JIRA tickets in your life.

Kanban board bookshelf source: bookshelf.bhupesh.me

But that’s just one leg down, and we know a bookshelf can’t stand on it alone.

We can begin by putting books where they belong, on a shelf. As we know, not all books look the same. Some of them have different cover or color.

Always a good move to keep some plants nearby; they say it keeps the paper fresh.

Bookshelf with books on a shelf source: shelvybooks.com

Again, it will be an injustice if we can’t really touch the books or flip a page.

Bookshelf animation source: biblio.ink

If space available is a problem, we can always stack the books on top of each other or side by side; that’s up to you.

source: balajmarius.com

Better yet, why stand outside the shelf when you can step into it?

We can make a bookshelf you can walk into. Basically, your own Criterion Closet.

source: github.com/kmcheung12/goodshelf

Is sky the limit?

And we don’t have to stop there; we can always take it a notch higher.

How about an online bookstore that’s managed completely by an AI agent? Here we go.

Self-managed online bookstore run by an AI agent source: byallo.com

That’s the whole point, it’s all possible now.

You no longer need to touch grass; you can create your own.

Woodworking, it seems, has been achieved internally.