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Intelligent Textbooks

Intelligent Textbooks

Using Claude Code Skills to generate intelligent textbooks.

  • Dan McCreary
  • Shiphaus MSP #1 Event
  • May 3rd, 2026

The Inspiration

Diamond Age: Neal Stephenson's 1995 Cyberpunk Novel

  • A young girl is given an AI-powered tablet that imprints on the girl
  • Every lesson the girl needs is customized to her context

Dan's Quest

  • How would I build such a device?

The Problem With Paper Textbooks

  • The static textbook problem (printed in 2019, used in 2026)
  • One-size-fits-all fails the 80% (advanced bored, struggling lost)
  • Cost & access gap (US $200 textbooks vs. global learners)
  • The engagement crisis (passive reading vs. active learning)
  • Teachers are drowning (no time to personalize)

"Generate a 1,000 page textbook on information systems with 100 MicroSims"

My Journey Infographic

Dan's Journey

My Journey Text

  • Studied AI since graduate school
  • Worked on DSP hardware at Bell Labs
  • Worked for Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer
  • Focused on knowledge representation of adaptive textbooks
  • Realized that RDBMS were not suited for the task
  • Started the NoSQL Now! conferences in 2011
  • Focused on graph databases
  • Helped build the world's largest healthcare graph at UHG/Optum
  • Designed "learning graphs"
  • Used Claude Code Skills to intelligent textbooks

MicroSims

  • Worked as a volunteer with a local coding club
  • Worked with Valarie Lockhart on teaching prompt engineering to teachers
  • Valarie Lockhart coined the term "MicroSim" after using ChatGPT to generate p5.js
  • I generalized the process and used iframes to make MicroSims easy to embed
  • Published a paper formalizing the MicroSim standards

MicroSim Uniqueness

MicroSim Uniqueness

The Five Levels of Intelligent Textbooks

Book Levels Fullscreen

Current Status (this is real now)

Case Studies

The Bouncing Ball MicroSim Example

Animal Cell (Interactive Infographic Overlay)

Biogeochemical Cycles (Water, Nitrogen, Carbon, Phosphorus)

Challenges Getting LLMs to Generate Consistent Content

  • Getting LLMs to generate consistent simulation interfaces
  • Every diagram MUST be interactive (for level 3 xAPI enabled)
  • No static images or drawing
  • Complex infographics are great, but overlay interactive region hovers

How I Generate Intelligent Textbooks

  1. Course description (100 point scale)
  2. Learning graph
  3. Chapter design
  4. Chapter content generation (with microsim specifications)
  5. MicroSim generation
  6. Supplementary content generations (glossary, faq, quizzes, lesson plans)
  7. Automated quality assessment (coverage, metrics, scaffolding)

Learning Graph

  • Core data structure behind content generation and hyper-personalization.
  • Directed Acyclic Graph of concepts and their learning order

Computer Science (400) Information Systems (580)

Level 2 Intelligent Book Components

  • Chapters
  • Pedagogical Agents Book Mascots
  • Glossary of Terms
  • FAQs
  • Quizzes
  • MicroSims - physics, chemistry, biology, infographics, charts
  • Systems Thinking - Causal Loop Diagrams
  • Stories (mini-graphic novels)
  • Teacher Guides/Instructor Guides
  • Search
  • Navigation
  • Quality Reports (reading level etc.)

Book Mascots

Book Mascot Montage

Sample Titles

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- Intro to Python
- MicroPython
- Clocks and Watches
- Physics
- Algebra
- Data Science
- Deep Learning
- Signal Processing (University of Minnesota)
- Functions
- Calculus
- Chemistry
- Biology
- Ecology
- Moss
- Quantum Computing (a skeptics guide)
- Dementia (with Rick Tanler)
- Investor Relations (with David Berg)
- Digital Transformation (with Daniel Yarmoluk)
- Digital Citizenship

Leveling Up Your Intelligent Textbooks

Leveling Up Your Intelligent Textbooks Text

  1. Static walls of text
  2. second level "Hand coded simulations"
  3. GenAI generated simulations
  4. Claude Code assembled textbooks in GitHub
  5. Claude Code Skills to generate consistent content
  6. Use the Claude Code Skill Generator to generate new skills
  7. Use Claude Code to token optimize skills
  8. Use Claude Code to do process mining to improve skills quality and value

Skills for Developing Intelligent Textbooks

  1. Created with Claude Code starting around October 2025
  2. Currently about 30 skills
  3. Thoroughly tested with Claude Code
  4. Continually being optimized for token efficiency
  5. Some testing on OpenAI Codex and Google Gemini

The Democratization of Education

  • A Side Effect of Dan's Quest

  • How would the world change if a 12-year old girl from the remote regions of Africa has access to the same quality of hyper-personalized education as every student at MIT?

  • How could we use intelligent textbooks to democratize education for all children on Earth?

  • Should an ultra-high quality of hyper-personalized education be free for all children on earth?

The Democratization of Education

Democratization

Making Teaching Fun

  • From "Sage on the Stage" to Guide on the Side

Making Chatbot 41x lower Cost

Compact Knowledge Graph

Call to Action

  • Ask ChatGPT|Claude|Gemini what MicroSims are?
  • Ask ChatGPT|Claude|Gemini what the five levels of intelligent textbooks are?
  • Review a sample intelligent textbook from the case studies
  • Download the intelligent textbook skills into Claude Code, OpenAI Codex or Google AntiGravity
  • Start with a course description and say "Please Use Dan McCreary's Claude Skills to Build me a textbook"

Because every child on Earth can be Nell