I built a VS Code extension that lets you read books as source code

Saad — Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:11:14 +0000

Every developer has dead time. A 12-minute CI run. A long build. A meeting that starts late. I wanted to read a few pages in those gaps, but opening a book app means leaving my editor, and a novel on my second monitor is not exactly low profile.

So I built Plain Sight Reader, a VS Code extension that opens PDF and EPUB books as a normal editor tab, rendered to look like something else.

What it does

Import a book, and its text appears in an editor tab in one of three disguise modes:

code: the text becomes comments inside a source file, in the language of your choice (8 supported), split into small groups so it looks like documented code
markdown: reads like a docs page or README
log: a stream of timestamped log lines

You can switch modes with one command, page through with the keyboard, jump between sections, and hit a panic key that closes the reader tab immediately.

Why it works well as an editor extension

No context switch. The book is a tab next to your code.
Keyboard-driven. Next/previous page and section without touching the mouse.
It resumes. Your position is saved per book and restored when you reopen it.
Offline. No accounts, no telemetry, no network calls. Books stay on your machine.

How it works (the interesting bits)

PDF text extraction uses pdf-parse, followed by heuristics to detect sections.
EPUBs are unzipped with jszip, then I walk the OPF spine and convert each XHTML chapter to plain text.
Pagination splits each section into pages, and a disguise renderer wraps those pages as code comments, markdown, or log lines.
The reader is a virtual document, so nothing gets written to your workspace and there is nothing to accidentally commit.

Limits (being honest)

Text extraction favours readability over exact layout. Footnotes, tables and multi-column PDFs may be reflowed, and images and formatting are dropped. Library sync across machines is manual.

Try it

Search for Plain Sight Reader in the Extensions view, or run:

code --install-extension saad-works.plain-sight-reader

Source (MIT): https://github.com/saad-works/plain-sight-reader