Utilities Guide

Book Card Generator

tools/book_cards.py downloads book cover images from Open Library and generates Quarto-formatted book cards.

Usage

Generate one or more books:

uv run tools/book_cards.py \
  "Thinking, Fast and Slow" \
  "The Pragmatic Programmer" \
  "Designing Data-Intensive Applications"

Write the generated Quarto markup to a file:

uv run tools/book_cards.py \
  "Thinking, Fast and Slow" \
  "The Pragmatic Programmer" \
  -o generated-books.qmd

Book covers are saved to:

images/books/

Options

--image-dir PATH      Set the book cover directory.
-o, --output FILE     Write generated markup to a file.
--no-heading TITLE    Omit the ### heading for a specific book.
--force               Redownload an existing cover.

View all options:

uv run tools/book_cards.py --help

Output

Generated Quarto markup:

::: {.book}
::: {.book-cover}
[![Thinking, Fast and Slow](/images/books/thinking-fast-and-slow.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374533555){target="_blank" rel="noopener"}
:::
::: {.book-body}
### Thinking, Fast and Slow
*Daniel Kahneman*

:::
:::

The area beneath the author is intentionally left blank for personal commentary.