Genius B*tchwork - Part 63: How ChatGPT tracked 40 new fantasy characters without spoilers

One reader got lost when book 2 added about 40 new characters, so they used ChatGPT to keep a character list that only covers the chapters

Nov 08, 2026

∙ Paid

This is a Genius B*tchwork post.

Most weeks I show you the boring work my own AI did for me. This time I want to show you something smart that AI did for someone else. A real reader, a real book, a real problem. Then I will hand you the steps so you can try the same thing.

I did not do this. I have not read this book. A Reddit user named u/Puluzu shared it in a comment in r/ChatGPT in August 2026. Everything below about what happened comes from that one comment, and it is their own account. I have not checked it any other way.

Here is what they said happened.

They were reading The Bound and the Broken. Book 2 brought in about 40 new characters. They got lost. Who is this person? Are they on the good side? Did we meet them before?

Looking it up online is risky with a book, because one wrong click can spoil the story. So they used ChatGPT to keep a character list for them. The list was built to stay "chapter-safe." That means it only knows about the part of the book you have already read.

That is a smart move. And you can copy it.

What keeping track the old way costs you

If you have ever read a big fantasy book, you know this pain.

You hit a new name and have no idea who it is. You flip back through the pages. You search a wiki, and a wiki is a spoiler trap. One line about "the villain's secret brother" and the twist is gone.

So you either stay lost or you risk the spoiler. Neither one is fun.

A chapter-safe list fixes that. It tells you who someone is based only on what you have read so far.

What you get in this one

I broke the idea down so a total beginner can try it. By the end of this post you will have:

The steps in order, from your first chapter to a full list.
A copy-paste prompt to start a spoiler-free character list.
A prompt to update the list after each few chapters.
A prompt to look up one name without spoilers.
A way to check the list against the real book.

You do not need to know anything about AI. You just need a book and a few minutes.

Quick and honest note before we start

Please read this part. It matters.

This story is one person's comment on Reddit. Their results are self-reported. I do not know how many of the 40 characters the list got right, and the comment does not prove it.

Also, AI can make things up when it summarizes books. It may sound very sure about a character that it got wrong. That is why this method has you give the AI the actual chapter text or your own notes, and then check the answers against the book. Do not trust a list just because it looks neat.

The prompts below are examples based on the method they described. The comment does not give the exact words they typed, so these are my versions.

Also, only paste text you have the right to use, and keep it for your own reading.

Behind the paywall, you get the full how-to:

The 5 steps in order, start to finish.
3 copy-paste prompts, ready to use.
How to keep the list spoiler-free as you read.
How to check the AI against the real book.
What AI cannot do here, and a quick steal-this recap.

Subscribing unlocks the rest of this exact post right now, not just future ones. If you have a fat book on your nightstand and a pile of names you cannot keep straight, this post is for you.

The full walkthrough is below the paywall.

Click the button, subscribe, and the locked section below opens right away. You get this article now.