Reading List

Your reading list lives across three Continuous Learning tabs — Books (/enablement/books), Articles (/enablement/articles), and Videos (/enablement/videos) — where you track what you consume for your career craft, each with a status, timestamped notes, and on-demand AI summaries. AI can also recommend new items tuned to your interests and self-reflection gaps. (The old /enablement/reading-list URL now redirects to Books.)

TL;DR — Add a book/article/video, set its status (Want to read → Reading → Finished), write notes as you go, and generate an AI summary on demand. A curated slice can be published on your public profile.

Three flavours of items: Books (ISBN, cover image, author, status), Articles (URL, optional author, tags), and Videos (URL, optional thumbnail + runtime, channel/platform). All three can have AI summaries and timestamped notes attached.

Quick start

  1. Open Continuous Learning → Books (or Articles / Videos) from the top sub-nav
  2. Each page opens with a single-row summary (total · reading · to-read · finished) above its grid
  3. Click + Add Reading
  4. Pick a kind (Book / Article / Video)
  5. Fill in the form — title is required; the rest is optional. Articles + Videos require a URL; Videos take an optional duration in minutes.
  6. Save — the item lands on the appropriate list

For books: if you provide an ISBN, the cover image auto-loads from Open Library when available (no upload required). For videos, the thumbnail comes from the cover-image URL if you set one.

The three pages

Each kind is its own top-nav tab and route:

  • Books (/enablement/books) — books grid with covers
  • Articles (/enablement/articles) — articles list
  • Videos (/enablement/videos) — videos list

Every page opens with a single-row summary (total · reading · to-read · finished, scoped to that kind), and within each you have:

  • Search — title / author / description / tags / notes
  • Status filter — Want to read / Reading / Finished / Abandoned

The cross-kind dashboard — the Currently reading strip, recently finished, and the per-category stat tiles — now lives on the Continuous Learning → Overview page, which links straight into Books, Articles, and Videos.

Suggest with AI

On the Books, Articles, or Videos tab, the Suggest with AI button generates recommendations targeting the weakest domains from your most recent Self Reflection:

  1. Click Suggest with AI → pick how many → Suggest
  2. Each suggestion shows a title, a suggested source (e.g. HBR, MIT Sloan, or — for videos — TED, LeadDev, Lenny's Podcast, Talks at Google), a short description, and a rationale tying it to one of your low-scoring domains
  3. Click Add to my list on the ones you want — they save with status = Want to read and the source as a tag

URLs are intentionally not generated (AI tends to hallucinate broken links) — each suggestion gives you enough to search and find the real artifact. Requires an AI provider configured in Settings → API Credentials. Admins can tune the suggestion prompt at /admin → AI Prompts → "Suggest reading items".

Importing reading

Two import paths:

  • Import URL — paste an article URL; we fetch the page and extract title, author, description
  • Import CSV — bulk import books or articles. Headers vary by kind:
    • Books: title,author,isbn,publisher,publishedDate,status,tags
    • Articles: title,author,url,publishedDate,description,tags

Up to 200 rows per import. The platform de-dupes on URL (articles) or ISBN+title (books).

The item detail drawer

Click any item to open its detail drawer, organised into three tabs (the book cover / video thumbnail stays pinned above the tab strip):

  • Details — metadata + an inline editor for status, rating, and tags
  • AI Summary — generate (or regenerate) an AI summary. The AI uses the description / link and writes a short digest. Useful for getting the gist of a "want to read" item before committing, or capturing takeaways on something you've finished. A small dot on the tab label marks when a summary exists.
  • Notes — a timestamped timeline (see below)

AI usage runs on your own configured provider — see Subscription and Settings → API Credentials.

Notes (timestamped)

The Notes tab on an item's detail drawer is a timeline:

  1. Type your note in the compose box at the top
  2. Optionally add a location (chapter / page / timestamp)
  3. Save — the note is timestamped to the moment you added it

Each note is editable in place.

The All Notes page (/enablement/reading-list/notes) shows every note across every item — books, articles, and videos — useful when you want to revisit ideas without remembering which item they came from. Deep-linking to ?id=<item> opens that item's notes directly (this is what the Currently reading buttons use).

Status flow (books)

| Status | Meaning | |---|---| | Want to read | On the list, not started | | Reading | In progress (sets startedAt when you flip to it) | | Finished | Done (sets finishedAt, locks in the rating) | | Abandoned | Stopped reading (preserved with notes) |

Articles don't have a status flow — you either read it or you didn't. But you can still mark them as "want to read" by adding them with the WANT_TO_READ status manually.

Rating

Books have an optional 1–5 star rating, settable when you mark a book as Finished. The rating shows on the card and is a useful filter when revisiting your finished list later.

Tips

  • Books take longer than articles to add value. The AI summary on a book you haven't read is a 60-second commit; the same on an article is a 30-second one. Use them differently.
  • Keep a few "want to read" books in flight. When you finish one, the next is queued — defeats decision fatigue.
  • Tag liberally. Tags work across books + articles, so you can search "leadership" and get every relevant item regardless of kind.
  • The Reading-related goals (monthly book, weekly reading note, article-a-week) auto-derive their counts from this table — you don't need to log entries manually.

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