I love books. Specifically, I love the physical artifact, also known as a codex, for its role in passing on wisdom through the ages—as beautifully described in Ken Liu‘s short story “The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.”  

I don’t read many books a year, as I prefer to practice slow reading and savour each one of them—I’m kidding, I’m just a slow reader. My love for books, combined with my slow reading ability, makes me a perfect practitioner of tsundoku—to reduce my pile, I started gifting my friends the books I want to read instead.

This was just a long intro to say that I’ve been thinking about writing short reviews for the books I read each year—to keep track of them and maybe spark a few conversations. And… who am I kidding? It’s just performative reading. But naturally, instead of just doing it, I came up with an elaborate excuse to postpone the whole thing: “I need an easy way to display book covers on my blog, and that means building a custom WordPress block that automatically downloads the cover from a title.” I knew I’d never find the time, however small, to implement that—and I didn’t like what I found. But then Automattic released Telex, an AI block builder.

With my excuse gone, I had to try what my colleagues had come up with. And I have to say that my first experience with the tool, despite its current limitations, exceeded my expectations. (Disclaimer: even though I work at Automattic, no one asked me to write a positive post about Telex. Besides, I would never compromise my integrity and lose the trust of my audience—the five friends who actually read my blog.)

Things I loved

A few moments that surprised me in the best way:

• The preview of the AI-generated block in WordPress Playground was delightful—not just because you can test the block, but because you can tweak it right there in the browser.
• All the reasonable little choices the AI model made regarding things I hadn’t specified, like what to include in the sidebar settings, small animations, UI decisions, etc.
• The priceless conversation where the model convinced me that scraping Goodreads for book covers was a terrible idea and suggested using OpenLibrary’s public API instead. It was like trying to convince your uptight friend to board a tram without a ticket in Vienna. I gave up.
• All the CSS I didn’t have to write or rewrite—my favourite thing in the world.

Things that still need improvement

Not dealbreakers, but worth noting:

• Iterating on small details—tiny UI tweaks and the like—felt slow, as it seemed the model was rewriting the entire block for every change I asked for. Granted, I could have made those tweaks myself, but I wanted to see how far you could get without touching a single line of code.
• The model didn’t always follow my instructions, which was a bit frustrating given the long waits between iterations. Like most agents I’ve tried, it nails the first 70% and then struggles with the remaining 30% as if it’s solving cold fusion.

Book cover grid block in action

After a few teaks, I’ve submitted it to the WordPress.org’s plugin repository for review. So if/when it gets approved it will be available at https://wordpress.org/plugins/book-grid. And here’s how the block looks with a mix of books I’ve read this year…and books I’ve merely acquired. 😅

Telex reminded me that most of the time we procrastinate because of the initial friction involved in going from zero to one. AI is reducing that friction and leaving us with fewer excuses to hide behind. So here I am, staring down a pile of books I’ve avoided reviewing for months. Looks like it’s finally time to re-read—and to write.