Prompt files

Tweak the prompt

To tweak the prompt, use the --prompt parameter. The placeholders the user template may use are {text} (required), {language} and {crlf} (a newline, for the shapes that cannot carry one). Anything else in braces is refused before the run starts; write {{ and }} for a literal brace. It supports a few ways to configure the prompt:

• If you don't need to set the system role content, you can simply set it up like this: --prompt "Translate {text} to {language}." or --prompt prompt_template_sample.txt

    # prompt_template_sample.txt
    Translate the given text to {language}. Be faithful or accurate in translation. Make the translation readable or intelligible. Be elegant or natural in translation. If the text cannot be translated, return the original text as is. Do not translate person's name. Do not add any additional text in the translation. The text to be translated is: 
    {text}
  

• If you need to set the system role content, you can use the following format: --prompt '{"user":"Translate {text} to {language}", "system": "You are a professional translator."}' or --prompt prompt_template.json

    # prompt_template.json
    {
        "system": "You are a professional book translator. Translate the given paragraphs into {language} and be accurate, faithful, and fluent. Return translated {language} text only.",
        "user": "Translate the following into {language}. Text:{crlf}{crlf}{text}",
        "style": ""
    }
  

• A third key, style, is a standing instruction about how to write. It is said once where a window starts — with the system message on the API routes, with the thread instructions on codex — not repeated on every request. The shipped prompt_template.json carries all three keys with style left empty: write your own voice in, or leave it blank.

• --prompt reaches every LLM route, srt books included: there its sections sit on top of the subtitle loader's own prompt, section by section, and replacing the user template means saying yourself that the block number and timeline must come back unchanged.

You can also set the user and system role prompt by setting environment variables: BBM_CHATGPTAPI_USER_MSG_TEMPLATE and BBM_CHATGPTAPI_SYS_MSG (gemini reads BBM_GEMINIAPI_USER_MSG_TEMPLATE and BBM_GEMINIAPI_SYS_MSG). --prompt outranks all of them. OPENAI_API_SYS_MSG is still read as a fallback but is deprecated; --prompt's own system message wins over it.

• A .md file is read as the PromptDown block form. The format is theirs; the reader is this repo's own, so no extra package is installed. --prompt prompt_md.prompt.md

    # Translation Prompt
  
    ## System Message
  
    You are a professional translator who specializes in accurate translations.
  
    ## Conversation
  
    **User:**
  
    Please translate the following text into {language}:
  
    {text}
  

  Three sections are read: ## System Message (## Developer Message is accepted as another name for it), an optional ## Style, and ## Conversation, whose first **User:** turn is the user template. A conversation written as a | Role | Content | table is refused — the template's newlines cannot survive a table cell.

Examples

python3 make_book.py --book_name test_books/animal_farm.epub --prompt prompt_template_sample.txt
# or
python3 make_book.py --book_name test_books/animal_farm.epub --prompt prompt_template.json
# or
python3 make_book.py --book_name test_books/animal_farm.epub --prompt "Please translate \`{text}\` to {language}"