TL;DR
A project called Trails maps thematic links across a set of 100 books using Claude Code to surface recurring ideas and patterns. The site lists dozens of concise themes and short explanations, and includes an explainer about how the connections were produced.
What happened
Pieter Ma published a web project called Trails that presents thematic links automatically discovered across a corpus of 100 books using Claude Code. The site organizes recurring ideas into short, named themes — for example entries touch on deception as strategy, brittle failure modes, collective knowledge loss, and the role of imitation — each paired with a brief explanatory blurb. Trails groups these motifs under labels such as 'Useful Lies', 'Invisible Crack', 'Collective Brain' and many others, providing a navigable index of conceptual threads. The project also points to an explainer describing the process used to generate the links. The work is hosted at trails.pieterma.es and the public page catalogs the discovered themes and short descriptions rather than reproducing the source texts themselves.
Why it matters
- Demonstrates how large-language-model tooling can be used to surface cross-cutting ideas across multiple books.
- Offers readers a compact way to explore recurring concepts without reading every source in full.
- May help researchers and writers spot patterns or generate synthesis hypotheses across a broad reading set.
- Highlights a practical use case for automated thematic analysis that could inform curation and recommendation workflows.
Key facts
- Project name: Trails.
- Creator listed as Pieter Ma on the project page.
- Claims to analyze a set of 100 books.
- Connections were generated automatically by a tool identified as Claude Code.
- The site presents dozens of named themes (examples include 'Useful Lies', 'Invisible Crack', 'Collective Brain', 'Useful Lies', 'Hidden Structure').
- Each theme entry is paired with a short explanatory blurb summarizing the idea.
- An explainer page on the site describes how the links were produced.
- Project URL: https://trails.pieterma.es/.
- Source page carries the framing 'Show HN' in its title.
What to watch next
- not confirmed in the source
- not confirmed in the source
- not confirmed in the source
Quick glossary
- Thematic link: A conceptual connection that ties together ideas, arguments, or patterns found across different texts.
- Claude Code: A named tool or model used by the project to automatically generate relationships; specifics of the system are not detailed in the source.
- Corpus: A collection of texts or documents used as the dataset for analysis.
- Explainer: An accompanying description or documentation that outlines the methods, assumptions, or steps behind a project.
Reader FAQ
What is Trails?
A web project that maps thematic connections across a set of 100 books using an automated tool called Claude Code.
Who created this project?
The project page lists Pieter Ma as the creator.
How were the connections generated?
The site states the links were automatically discovered by Claude Code; further methodological detail is in the project's explainer.
Which books were analyzed?
not confirmed in the source
Pieter Ma . es trails books what is this? Trails Thematic links across books, automatically discovered by Claude Code. Read how it works in the explainer. Useful Lies Self-deception as…
Sources
- Show HN: I used Claude Code to discover connections between 100 books
- Show HN: Syntopic reading with Claude Code
- ykdojo/claude-code-tips: 40+ tips for getting …
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