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Case study · Reading Tool · 1 min read

Vesta Press: Read Anything, Beautifully

An exploration of a reading tool that strips the noise from anything you paste in (a link, some text, a screenshot) and typesets it cleanly, in whichever reading style suits the moment.

Role
Design & build
Timeline
2026
Team
Solo, with Claude Code
Tools
Next.js, React, TypeScript, Anthropic API, Supabase
Vesta Press: Read Anything, Beautifully
Problem

The temptation was to summarize

The easy version of an AI reading tool summarizes the article for you. I decided this one never would. Vesta reformats, it does not rewrite: it strips the ads and the cramped columns and the popovers, keeps every word the writer put down, and only changes how those words are set.

Summarizing would have felt more like AI. It would also have quietly said your time matters more than the writer's, which is the opposite of what reading is for.

The call

What I decided

Reading is a mood, so the typography should bend to it. The same piece can be set as Editorial (magazine serif with drop caps), Minimal (clean sans and air), Manuscript, or Document, and switching between them is one tap. It takes a link, raw text, or a photo of a page, and once the words are pulled out it treats all three the same.

Nothing you save is trapped, either. There is a clean export to markdown, because a reading tool that holds your library hostage is not calm, it is just another silo wearing a nicer font.

Principle

The discipline

The hard part was using AI to do less, not more. Restraint was the whole product: take something loud and give it room to breathe.

Thanks for reading.