How to use Codex to build an Odyssey tree viewer
Codex wrote scripts and an HTML tree viewer for The Odyssey and supervised local Gemma summarization. Readers can drill from summaries of all 24 books to sentence summaries and then original paragraphs.
news.ycombinator.com
Suggested prompt
Suggested prompt written by Agents In Use, not the source author. Replace bracketed inputs and review tool permissions first.
Build an HTML tree viewer for [public-domain work]. Use [local summarization model] to summarize each [book or chapter] as a paragraph and each source paragraph as a sentence, preserving tone. Let readers drill down from those summaries to the original text.
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Sourced account- Source poster / publisher
- pettijohn
- Original account
- Read the source ↗
- Published
- Source link checked
- Reported result
- The author shared a live tree viewer covering all 24 books, with navigation from book summaries to sentence summaries and original paragraphs.
- Human involvement
- The author chose the reading goal and tone requirement and shared the result; the post does not describe systematic accuracy review.
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How the agent did it
- Ask Codex for a tree-view version of The Odyssey.
- Have Codex write scripts and the HTML tree viewer.
- Run local Gemma summarization with instructions to preserve source tone.
The author asked Codex 5.6 Sol Medium to create a tree-view version of The Odyssey in one shot. Their goal was to become familiar with the work before seeing the film. They described the result as interactive Cliffs Notes that lets readers remain at a high level or drill down to the source text.
Codex wrote the scripts and HTML tree viewer, and supervised the summarization pipeline. The summarization itself ran locally using Gemma-4-26B-A4B. The prompt for Gemma asked it to preserve the source's style or tone, which the author said helped the summaries read well alongside the book.
The viewer distills each of the Odyssey's 24 books into a paragraph. Clicking that paragraph reveals one-sentence summaries of the source paragraphs, and selecting a sentence reveals its corresponding original paragraph. The author shared a live version and pointed to PROMPT.md for the original request, whose contents are not included here. Who it's for: Readers who want layered summaries with a direct route back to the original text.
Prompt
Suggested prompt (written by Agents In Use, not the author's)
Source: Hacker News · pettijohn
Frequently asked questions
Which model actually generated the summaries?
The author used Gemma-4-26B-A4B locally for summarization. Codex wrote the scripts and viewer and supervised the pipeline.
How does a reader reach the original text?
Clicking a book summary reveals sentence summaries of source paragraphs. Selecting a sentence displays its original paragraph.
More details
Remaining steps
- Publish a viewer linking book summaries to sentences and source paragraphs.
About this account
Codex wrote the scripts and viewer and supervised the summarization pipeline, while a local Gemma model generated the summaries.
Platform: Hacker News. Attribution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48928214. Prompt: Suggested (written by Agents In Use, not the author's). Sourced by the Agents In Use pipeline.
Credit: pettijohn on Hacker News
Source published
Added to Agents In Use
Source checked
Tools and topics
Codex · Gemma-4-26B-A4B · HTML
Literature · Summarization · Local models
Editorial completeness: 100/100. Measures documented fields, not agent performance or verified outcomes.