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Ground Chinese study sessions in your own textbook with an MCP server
A learner OCR’d his Chinese textbooks into a stateless MCP server so quizzes stick to the textbook only.
- Difficulty
- IntermediateOur rating
- Time to build
- Not reportedOur estimate
- Monthly cost
- Not reported
- Revenue
- Not reportedWe only show revenue the source states
- Engagement
- 1 reply to HN commentComment in “Ask HN: Who is using MCP in production?” (198 points, 201 comments) · fetched Oct 15, 2026
What they did
navigate8310 OCR’d his Chinese textbooks and built a stateless MCP server to run quizzes and compare similar words without extra grammar creeping in. He uses it with GLM 5.3.
How it went
He published the repo and a hosted server.
Worth knowing
Restricting the model to your textbook keeps it at your level.
Builder recipe
Our own starting point, written from the source. Adapt it to your setup.
Stack
- OCR tool
- Stateless MCP server over the text
- Any LLM client
Steps
- Pick one concept to learn or teach.
- Have the agent build or explain it step by step.
- Test your understanding by changing parameters or asking why.
- Iterate.
Starter prompt
Using only the textbook tool, quiz me on lesson [N] vocabulary. Then explain the difference between [word A] and [word B] using only examples from the book.Tags
Read the original
- Hacker News: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49561857 ↗ (opens in new tab) Sep 4, 2026 · HN comment, 1 replies, thread: 198 points, 201 comments (fetched 2026-10-15)
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