Developer Releases Booko, a Cross-Platform Reading-Highlights App Built Entirely With AI Coding

The developer wrote that he had read for more than 1,200 hours in WeRead and accumulated over 30,000 highlights and notes, but usually moved straight from one book to the next and left the passages that had once struck him sitting unused. He began working on Booko last December to organize and revisit his own WeRead notes, then concluded that many readers use Kindle, Apple Books, Dedao or Douban Reading instead, and turned the project into an app that supports multi-platform import and centralized review.

Importing was the first problem. When Booko launched, users had to copy highlights out of WeRead by hand and paste them into the app, an approach the developer called impractical for hundreds of books and which also left out cover images. After WeRead's Skill, which provides interfaces for reading a user's bookshelf, highlights and thoughts, went live in mid-May, he integrated it into Booko. Users can now enter a WeRead API key and batch-import all of their books and notes in one step. The developer said Booko is the first product to integrate WeRead Skill. The app also imports notes from Kindle, Apple Books, Douban Reading, Dedao and iReader, and arranges material from every source on one shelf, grouped by book.

Imported content collects in the app's Library, which opens as a wall of book covers; the background of an individual book's page shifts color to match its cover. A link icon on the review page of a WeRead highlight jumps back to the corresponding chapter in the original book for context.

Besides book highlights, the developer wanted a place for fragments that do not come from a book, such as passages from web pages or PDFs and ideas that arrive while walking. To keep recording unobstructive, Booko hooks into system-level entry points: on iPhone and iPad, text can be sent through the Share Sheet, typed directly into a home screen widget, or captured through Shortcuts automations; on Mac, selecting text in any application and using the right-click menu sends it to Booko. New items go first into an Inbox or a default book, with sorting left for later.

For organizing accumulated material, Booko offers Collections, which the developer describes as a many-to-many relationship similar to Apple Music playlists: one highlight or note can appear in several collections at once, so a collection on product thinking could hold a passage from The Design of Everyday Things alongside excerpts and jottings captured elsewhere.

Booko's Review page supports both sequential browsing and a random mode that does not require choosing a book first. Widgets on iPhone, iPad and Mac display a single highlight without opening the app, a daily push delivers one past highlight at a set time, and the newly added Apple Watch version syncs random review to the watch and can be placed on the watch face.

The Mac version was rebuilt from scratch over nearly two months. It uses a three-column layout with navigation on the left, a grid-or-list content view in the center and a panel on the right for adjusting type, layout and card style or editing book information. The developer said the visual style refers to Craft and the keyboard interactions draw on Linear: arrow keys or J and K move through notes in order, and L switches to a random highlight, keeping both hands on the keyboard. Highlights can be copied as plain text or Markdown, or exported as card images.

Booko was developed entirely through AI coding, with the developer and AI collaborating on interface implementation, interaction logic and the underlying data structures. He said getting AI to produce working code is only the first step, and that handling the many-to-many relationships among books, chapters, notes and collections, keeping lists smooth with tens of thousands of highlights, and settling details such as the information architecture on phone and Mac, widget design and focus management during keyboard navigation all required his own judgment.

The app has no account system and no self-hosted servers; all books and notes are stored locally on the device and synced across iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch through Apple's iCloud. Basic features are free, with an allowance of 10 books and 1,000 notes, and Booko Pro is sold as a one-time 88 yuan purchase rather than a monthly or annual subscription. The developer said he still wants the same thing he wanted at the start: to bring writing that once moved a reader back into daily life, where it can be read again and put to use.