Inspiration and what it does
Book Pathfinder helps beginning authors make the next real book-planning decision without letting automation silently decide for them. It asks one useful question at a time, explains why that decision matters, keeps uncertainty visible, and stages every typed, transcript-style, or photo/OCR-derived proposal for author review before anything becomes a decision.
The demo shows a private local browser workflow for a self-hosted MCP-oriented product path: start a private Book Path, answer a beginner-friendly question, review staged input, confirm or reject proposals, resume saved state, handle revision conflicts, and export a structured book_plan_v1 plan. The hosted MCP implementation and acceptance evidence are preserved separately in the repository.
How we built it
Book Pathfinder implements a protected Model Context Protocol server over Streamable HTTP, using the official MCP Node packages. The hosted development candidate separates service discovery from user operations, validates Auth0 issuer/audience/scope claims, enforces governed project grants, and persists encrypted Book Paths in a SQLite Durable Object design. The browser demo is a simulated/web MCP workflow for the hackathon video; it does not claim native Alexa simulator operation.
Existing-project disclosure
The planning domain began before the hackathon inside Veristio's broader authoring work. During the submission period, Book Pathfinder was extracted into a standalone submission-safe product repository and significantly expanded with a protected Streamable HTTP MCP boundary, local browser workspace, atomic local persistence, encrypted Durable Object persistence candidate, confirmation-gated MCP tools, revision/conflict controls, local Windows/WAV speech intake, maintained local Tesseract.js printed-English OCR intake, hosted acceptance evidence, security/QA review records, private reviewer packaging, and a public demo video.
What we learned and challenges
The MCP server and Node packages made the transport boundary explicit and helped keep planning-domain code separate from host, persistence, and authentication concerns. Streamable HTTP and protected-resource metadata fit the product well because Book Pathfinder needs service discovery without giving service credentials access to user operations.
What worked well: the MCP boundary was testable, the official packages supported a clean local and hosted harness, and the separation between service discovery and user authorization helped prevent accidental privilege blending.
What needs work: Alexa+ add-on/native simulator access remains private-preview gated for this team, so the current submission uses the self-hosted MCP/simulated web workflow route. The project also needed careful provider-specific OAuth setup and explicit reviewer-access planning.
Would we build with this path again? Yes, for review-gated authoring workflows where a structured tool boundary is more important than a chat-only interface. The remaining gap is native Alexa preview availability, not the core MCP product boundary.
Evidence boundaries
The public demo is 84 seconds, silent with burned-in English captions. It shows the local browser workflow. Dated hosted MCP and persistence evidence is supplied separately in the repository. We do not claim native Alexa operation, Amazon-origin latency, natural live microphone proof, physical phone-camera proof, audio narration, production Authors Resort integration, or forced Durable Object eviction/restart recovery. Local Windows/WAV speech and printed-English PNG/JPEG OCR remain author-reviewed proposals; handwriting and broad document-layout recognition are not claimed.
Source and reviewer access
The source repository is private. knmeiss, giolaq, anishamalde, mosesroth, emersonsklar, and devposttesting have accepted collaborator access. chris-trag has an active invitation sent October 1, expected to expire October 8; access will become active upon acceptance. Reviewer setup explicitly selects main. No owner credentials are needed for the locally runnable review path.
Source: https://github.com/micryptrosen/veristio-book-pathfinder
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