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Comment by smoores | original | Automating Immersive Reading
[−]smoores · 2026-08-30 Sun 11:46 UTC · link
I took a week of from work recently to reimplement Storyteller's forced alignment algorithm. Storyteller[1] is an open source, self hosted platform for creating, managing, and reading/listening to "readaloud" books — books that have audiobook narration built in and can highlight each sentence (and/or word, with this new algorithm!) as it's read aloud. Forced alignment is the process of determining where each piece of text starts and ends in the audiobook.

Anyway, I am really pleased with how the new algorithm turned out! Hopefully someone else finds it interesting as well.

[1] https://storyteller-platform.dev

[−]orsenthil · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:37 UTC · link
This is excellent! I wanted this. I had noticed that Kindle had limited feature like this for certain books that support audiobooks. I had tried this style of reading with audiobook and ebook without a any automated sync, but hadn't pursued it. This looks cool. :)
[−]smoores · 2026-08-30 Sun 13:47 UTC · link
Thanks! We're improving it all the time — we're working on big new releases ("v3") for the web app and mobile apps. There's a Discord server linked in the docs if you ever need any help out want to chat!
[−]zackify · 2026-08-30 Sun 14:58 UTC · link
This is great. Recently got an xteink x3 and jailbroke my kindle, making custom stuff for it.

I couldn't find it exactly in the docs. Sorry if I missed it.

If you align these and then pull onto koreader via opds or other way, will audio work over Bluetooth there too? Along with the highlighting.

[−]smoores · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:03 UTC · link
You can use a KOReader plugin, https://github.com/stradichenko/audiobook.koplugin, which has work-in-progress support for Media Overlays (the EPUB spec that Storyteller uses for readaloud)!
[−]zackify · 2026-08-30 Sun 15:34 UTC · link
Wow I didn't even think about just using on device AI.

I'm going to set this one up and try it with kokoro which has the most natural for small size that I've seen. Wonder if the paperwhite 12th Gen can handle it.

And also setup the main repo for when I have the real audio book. Thanks!