Use caseRead
Have your agent annotate a book you are reading
A reading guide written before you start, and the passages worth stopping at already marked in the margin — with the book still sitting in your own folder.
- You start with
- A long book in the folder MindMax has open — EPUB, Kindle file or PDF — and Claude Code or Codex beside it.
- Time
- An afternoon of the app’s work, then your own reading, which is the part that cannot be delegated.
- Your part
- The question you are reading for, the notes you write back, and the decision about which chapters to skip.
What you'll end up with
- A chapter map: two levels of structure and one line per chapter, so you can see the shape before page one.
- A reading guide with what each part is for, what to watch for, and where to start if you only have an evening.
- Highlights and margin notes on specific passages, each saying why it is worth your attention.
- All of it in the same book: filter by colour, reply to a note, and let MindMax’s own AI answer the ones you leave open.
The book is not summarised into something shorter. It is marked up so that reading it is faster.
Marking up a book before you read it
Put the book in the folder and open it
YouEPUB and Kindle files are read as books; a PDF works too. The workspace you have open is what the app can reach, so a book in your downloads folder is not in reach until it is in the folder.
Connect the app you read with
YouSettings → External AI → Connect. No file is uploaded: the app talks to MindMax on your own machine, and no MindMax model runs on the request, so no MindMax credits are spent.
Say what you are reading it for
You ask · MindMax answersAskI have this book open in MindMax. I need the argument on how the policy actually changed, for a brief on Monday. Prepare it for me.
The purpose changes the guide. The same book prepared for an exam, for a citation, and for an argument you are about to disagree with comes back marked up three different ways.
It gets a map instead of four thousand pages
A long book arrives as two levels of structure with a one-line note per chapter and a section id for each — roughly twelve thousand characters for a five-hundred-page book. The app picks a chapter, reads that section whole, and goes back for another.
The guide and the marks land in the book
The reading guide goes where MindMax’s own would: the reading panel, with priorities and margin notes. Highlights and comments are attached to the passages themselves, grouped and attributed to the app that added them.
Read it yourself, with company
YouThis is the point of the whole thing. You read the paragraph; the note beside it says why this one matters and what the chapter is doing with it. You disagree with a note, you reply to it — and the thread is there when you come back to the book in three weeks.
Ask the follow-up on the page
You ask · MindMax answersAskThe author says the reform was inevitable in chapter 6 and contingent in chapter 9. Where exactly does that turn, and what does he attribute it to?
Follow-ups can quote back into the book, so the answer points at the passage rather than paraphrasing the whole chapter from memory.
Why it works here
A long book is navigated, not skimmed
Handed a wall of text, any model quotes the beginning and guesses the rest. Handed a map with a note per chapter and a section id for each, it reads whole sections — the same route MindMax’s own assistant takes through the same book.
Reading books in MindMax →Annotations are annotations, not a report
What comes back is not a summary document you read instead of the book. It is highlights and comments on the passages, in the same margin you use, filterable by the same colours, answerable by MindMax’s AI when you leave a question in the thread.
Why checked quotes matter →No copy of the book leaves your machine
The app reads the file through MindMax locally. What your app then sends to its own provider is governed by that provider’s terms, and MindMax neither forwards the book nor keeps a copy anywhere else.
What leaves the machine →Also used here: Guide: connect an AI app · The reading guide pipeline · Read a book and keep notes
Where it gets hard
- A guide is not a substitute for the book
It tells you where to slow down. A guide written from chapter maps can be confidently wrong about a detail three pages into a section, and it cannot tell you what the author does not say. Read the passages it marks.
- Long books cost real tokens
The app reads sections through its own model, billed to your Claude or OpenAI account. A five-hundred-page book costs roughly what reading it once costs in tokens — cheaper than a second pass by you, not cheaper than the book.
- Scans and DRM are the usual failures
A scanned PDF without recognised text reads as page images, so the guide becomes commentary on pictures. Kindle files work as books; a DRM-locked file from a store may not open at all.
- The app chooses the chapters
A question can be passed along as a hint, so plausible chapters are marked before the model chooses — but the choosing stays with the model. Ask what it read, and the answer lists the sections it opened.
- Annotations need a book that opens as a book
Highlights and margin notes attach to text in MindMax’s reader. In a PDF without a text layer, or a file opened as a plain document, you get comments on the file rather than marks in the margin.
Then what
As long as the book takes
The slower version, with MindMax’s own assistant reading alongside you chapter by chapter.
About 30 minutes
When it is one paper rather than one book, and tomorrow is the deadline.
About an hour
When the question spans several books and the answer has to be cited.
Marked up is not read. It only means the reading starts from the right page.