I flagged all of your submissions because they're low-quality and you're spamming the site. You've submitted four of these just today.
> I'm not trying to claim it as my own.
This is from the flag-killed Lisp submission:
>> About the Author
>> This book was written by someone who believes that Lisp is not just a programming language but a notation for expressing thought, and that parentheses are not obstacles but wings that let your code fly.
You are absolutely claiming it as your own, there is no mention of LLMs, Claude, or AI generating this content. The only hint that claude is involved in this is in the Git repository details themselves, but both commits are from you, not from claude.
here's an idea. you call it a "FOSS book"? OK, treat writing it like an open-source project.
start a public GitHub repo. have your chatbot generate chapter 1. commit it to the repo, and in the commit message document the LLM prompt you used. "you are an established author writing a book called Teach Yourself Quantum Computing in 24 Hours" or whatever.
then, whatever "careful" edits you make manually to that LLM output, do those as separate commits/PRs. show your work. the LLM is going to hallucinate and get subtle details wrong, your role as a human co-author is theoretically to be a subject-matter expert and catch those mistakes.
These are all open source github repos. Claude code came up with the commit messages; I'm guiding the tone and content. I read it as it is generated, and review it. I recommend getting a folder with claude code, codex cli, or gemini cli, and tell it it's an author writing a book. Once you've done the work, you'll know how much is human and how much is machine. Moot point amongst all the haters. I'm hoping some more PRs will come in and this content will evolve into a new form of media we collaborate on together.
> Just trying to be a good community member here. What are your thoughts?
and
> Moot point amongst all the haters.
LLMs are often configured to be extremely agreeable and friendly with their users. if you spend a lot of time talking with a chatbot, that may become a subconscious expectation you have for all conversations, including with regular ol' humans.
you've gotten some very mild and reasonable pushback in this thread. jumping immediately to talking about "all the haters" is a bit of an over-reaction.
I mean, AI generated content on HN is against the guidelines. I don't know if there are more recent statements by our fearless mods on it, but this is a well-known one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747
So linking to an AI-generated book may not be the same situation, so technically not against the rules... but probably is against the spirit of the site, so is probably not going to be appreciated by the community.
Your stream of submissions for your own GitHub repository are also not in the spirit of the HN guideline against self-promotion:
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
The HN guidelines are available at the link at the bottom of the page.
I often tell Claude Code: "You're an author writing about..." and really dial in the content. When it says it was written by an author who _blank_, that author is a combination of my prompts and Opus 4.1's generated output. I would argue that there is a place for guides, opinions, and more from our LLM friends, and I don't make a penny telling you that or sharing what I've generated. I create these kinds of works because I value them, and the stars on the github repo tell me other people value them too. Take, for example "React is Awful" with over 300 stars. It fills a gap in the learning space, and is CC0. You can OPEN A PR if it's wrong about something, or contribute more. Seemed pretty chill to me.
I guess if I wanted to read a book written by Claude, I would ask Claude to write the book. I wouldn’t need you to do it, or to post them to hacker news, I would just ask Claude to do it.
Like with programming, I’m sure there are ways AI can help authors and subject matter experts be more productive, and hopefully help readers learn from the works created.
However at the current moment, I have few good tools to discern signal from noise.
Is the human co-author an experienced Lisp programmer who used an AI authoring tool to ease the process of writing a book?
Or is he/she an AI grifter, looking for quick cash by asking an AI to churn out thousands of words he/she has no understanding of and no care as to whether they are helpful or correct.
I'm sharing a work product, just one that used a power tool. You didn't use that power tool to make my work product, I did. That's why people are curious - they want to see what was made. I'm an experienced Elisp programmer, among many other things. I'm curious what Claude Code Opus 4.1 has to say on the topic, aren't you? Why the hell anyone would try to get rich off a book on Perl or Lisp shared under CC0 in an open community is beyond me, but maybe -- just maybe -- somebody wants to read it? It's free. And open source. If that matters.
> I'm curious what Claude Code Opus 4.1 has to say on the topic, aren't you?
No. Claude isn’t a person and has nothing to say on any topic without a human providing the prompt.
Again, if I wanted Claude to write me a book about lisp or anything else, I’d ask it too. I ask AI tools to do stuff everyday, not clear value you are adding by inserting yourself between the tool and the readers who have the same access to the same tool.
If you think the stuff has value and you’re sharing it for free, that’s great, but I don’t know you from Adam, so your recent flood of HN posting doesn’t inspire confidence, it just looks like self promotion of AI slop being churned out at a rapid pace.
I'm a senior developer on medical leave who wanted to contribute to the community. I used Claude to help create the programming guides I wished existed - carefully prompting for content about languages I've worked with extensively. People were engaging positively with the Perl book before it was flagged. If there are specific technical issues with the content, I welcome that feedback via issues or PRs. But dismissing all AI-assisted content as 'slop' regardless of quality or utility seems shortsighted, especially as these tools become part of how we create and share knowledge.
I flagged all of your submissions because they're low-quality and you're spamming the site. You've submitted four of these just today.
> I'm not trying to claim it as my own.
This is from the flag-killed Lisp submission:
>> About the Author
>> This book was written by someone who believes that Lisp is not just a programming language but a notation for expressing thought, and that parentheses are not obstacles but wings that let your code fly.
You are absolutely claiming it as your own, there is no mention of LLMs, Claude, or AI generating this content. The only hint that claude is involved in this is in the Git repository details themselves, but both commits are from you, not from claude.
> my Claude Code written book
> I carefully craft and review these
> I'm not trying to claim it as my own
I'm confused, is it your book, or not?
here's an idea. you call it a "FOSS book"? OK, treat writing it like an open-source project.
start a public GitHub repo. have your chatbot generate chapter 1. commit it to the repo, and in the commit message document the LLM prompt you used. "you are an established author writing a book called Teach Yourself Quantum Computing in 24 Hours" or whatever.
then, whatever "careful" edits you make manually to that LLM output, do those as separate commits/PRs. show your work. the LLM is going to hallucinate and get subtle details wrong, your role as a human co-author is theoretically to be a subject-matter expert and catch those mistakes.
These are all open source github repos. Claude code came up with the commit messages; I'm guiding the tone and content. I read it as it is generated, and review it. I recommend getting a folder with claude code, codex cli, or gemini cli, and tell it it's an author writing a book. Once you've done the work, you'll know how much is human and how much is machine. Moot point amongst all the haters. I'm hoping some more PRs will come in and this content will evolve into a new form of media we collaborate on together.
30 minutes and 11 seconds elapsed between:
> Just trying to be a good community member here. What are your thoughts?
and
> Moot point amongst all the haters.
LLMs are often configured to be extremely agreeable and friendly with their users. if you spend a lot of time talking with a chatbot, that may become a subconscious expectation you have for all conversations, including with regular ol' humans.
you've gotten some very mild and reasonable pushback in this thread. jumping immediately to talking about "all the haters" is a bit of an over-reaction.
My first one even captured the banter with the LLM: https://github.com/cloudstreet-dev/React-is-Awful/blob/main/...
I mean, AI generated content on HN is against the guidelines. I don't know if there are more recent statements by our fearless mods on it, but this is a well-known one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33950747
So linking to an AI-generated book may not be the same situation, so technically not against the rules... but probably is against the spirit of the site, so is probably not going to be appreciated by the community.
Thank you for that bit of clarity.
Your stream of submissions for your own GitHub repository are also not in the spirit of the HN guideline against self-promotion:
"Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity."
The HN guidelines are available at the link at the bottom of the page.
I often tell Claude Code: "You're an author writing about..." and really dial in the content. When it says it was written by an author who _blank_, that author is a combination of my prompts and Opus 4.1's generated output. I would argue that there is a place for guides, opinions, and more from our LLM friends, and I don't make a penny telling you that or sharing what I've generated. I create these kinds of works because I value them, and the stars on the github repo tell me other people value them too. Take, for example "React is Awful" with over 300 stars. It fills a gap in the learning space, and is CC0. You can OPEN A PR if it's wrong about something, or contribute more. Seemed pretty chill to me.
Just trying to be a good community member here. What are your thoughts?
I guess if I wanted to read a book written by Claude, I would ask Claude to write the book. I wouldn’t need you to do it, or to post them to hacker news, I would just ask Claude to do it.
Like with programming, I’m sure there are ways AI can help authors and subject matter experts be more productive, and hopefully help readers learn from the works created.
However at the current moment, I have few good tools to discern signal from noise.
Is the human co-author an experienced Lisp programmer who used an AI authoring tool to ease the process of writing a book?
Or is he/she an AI grifter, looking for quick cash by asking an AI to churn out thousands of words he/she has no understanding of and no care as to whether they are helpful or correct.
I'm sharing a work product, just one that used a power tool. You didn't use that power tool to make my work product, I did. That's why people are curious - they want to see what was made. I'm an experienced Elisp programmer, among many other things. I'm curious what Claude Code Opus 4.1 has to say on the topic, aren't you? Why the hell anyone would try to get rich off a book on Perl or Lisp shared under CC0 in an open community is beyond me, but maybe -- just maybe -- somebody wants to read it? It's free. And open source. If that matters.
> I'm curious what Claude Code Opus 4.1 has to say on the topic, aren't you?
No. Claude isn’t a person and has nothing to say on any topic without a human providing the prompt.
Again, if I wanted Claude to write me a book about lisp or anything else, I’d ask it too. I ask AI tools to do stuff everyday, not clear value you are adding by inserting yourself between the tool and the readers who have the same access to the same tool.
If you think the stuff has value and you’re sharing it for free, that’s great, but I don’t know you from Adam, so your recent flood of HN posting doesn’t inspire confidence, it just looks like self promotion of AI slop being churned out at a rapid pace.
I'm a senior developer on medical leave who wanted to contribute to the community. I used Claude to help create the programming guides I wished existed - carefully prompting for content about languages I've worked with extensively. People were engaging positively with the Perl book before it was flagged. If there are specific technical issues with the content, I welcome that feedback via issues or PRs. But dismissing all AI-assisted content as 'slop' regardless of quality or utility seems shortsighted, especially as these tools become part of how we create and share knowledge.
How many LOC in Common Lisp has you written?