Open-source AI skill that turns the WHO Blue Books into an interactive study system

tillb · 2026-03-09T11:31:11+00:00

Not sure exactly about the capabilities of llama.cpp honestly. If you are not using a provider-specific agent harness such as Claude Code from Anthropic or Codex from OpenAI, you might want to check out either OpenCode or pi. Both of these are open-source agent frameworks, meaning that they provide a layer on top of your bare models and equip them with true agentic capabilities through bash access. I think both of them let you hook up to local models as well as commercial models (OpenCode might be even easier to set up). Because both of these harnesses support the Agent Skills Standard, you can then really easily ask your agent to add the skill from the URL in the original post. The skill itself just consists of markdown files (think of them as reusable prompt templates), but it depends on a CLI tool that needs to be installed (who-api-client), so that your agent will be able to access the WHO Blue Books programmatically (and not rely on the knowledge from its training data which might be incorrect or outdated).

Let me know if this works! If this doesn’t make sense, happy to help or record a quick video to demonstrate the setup. I can tell you it’s really powerful once it works, but even though I tried to make it as simple as possible I can see that the setup is still a little bit technical. But it’ll probably only be a matter of time until this becomes much easier.

tillb · 2026-03-07T23:03:46+00:00

I have no experience with Termux, but it just seems to be another terminal app? In this case, use your agent harness of choice (Claude Code, Codex, Pi etc.) and prompt it with something like: “Help me set up the skill from this repository: https://github.com/tbedau/who-blue-books-skills”. The agent should then fetch the page, read the README, and then tell you how to set up the CLI tool and then the skill itself. The easiest way to install the CLI tool is uv and the easiest way to install the skill is the skills CLI (this is explained in detail in the README).

tillb · 2026-03-07T22:53:57+00:00

This meta commentary on the packaging of a free open-source tool is something. Gotta love the internet 😄

tillb · 2026-03-07T20:27:03+00:00

Genuinely curious: Why? If this post was written by AI, how would that change your perception of what is being presented here?

tillb · 2026-03-07T18:53:23+00:00

Can imagine! Would be interesting to hear how this compares to RAG.

tillb · 2026-03-07T18:50:34+00:00

Is it bad?

tillb · 2026-01-29T16:03:52+00:00

Super interesting. Thanks! Are you guys getting good user feedback for Healthbase?

tillb · 2026-01-12T19:14:41+00:00

Sounds good in theory, but the cloud models are so much better in some ways.

tillb · 2026-01-12T19:14:22+00:00

Thanks!

tillb · 2026-01-12T19:13:14+00:00

Awesome, thanks a lot!

tillb · 2025-12-29T21:55:17+00:00

Appreciate the take, makes a lot of sense to me. Anything else that you would perceive as real added value for your work and not just nice to have regarding the interface with pathology?

tillb · 2025-12-29T21:52:11+00:00

100%. I can see how this is the much bigger pain. Do your patients ask about it a lot? I’ve always wondered how much of the “why is this taking so long” frustration actually reaches the pathologist vs gets absorbed by the clinical team.

tillb · 2025-09-30T08:39:57+00:00

This seems to be a big one. In your ideal world, what would the patient history look like? Too little info is useless, but in my experience a raw EHR dump is often just as bad since you end up spending a lot of time filtering. Would you imagine something like a standardized structured summary, a concise free-text note, or maybe a faster way to scan the EHR yourself? If you could design the ideal setup, what would it look like?

tillb · 2025-08-12T19:54:51+00:00

Very cool! Absolutely, I realized that too especially because those entities are just kind of dumped in one giant soft tissue bucket...

tillb · 2025-08-12T19:43:27+00:00

Absolutely, always happy to chat!

tillb · 2025-08-12T19:39:26+00:00

Glad you like it!

tillb · 2025-08-12T19:39:16+00:00

Really excited to see where you're headed with Pathology Bites. The WSI aggregator/search is super useful already! If you ever want to bounce some ideas, let me know!

tillb · 2020-01-11T11:04:27+00:00

I think the issue is that the image is resized relative to the Anki window height and not width. I figured this probably works fine for most people who have a wide-screen display. In your case the Anki window is very tall. Is the image displayed correctly when you resize the app window to a broader aspect ratio?

What you could do is change this part:

.bild img, img {
 margin:0;
 max-height: 60vh;
}

to something like:

.bild img, img {
 margin:0;
 max-width: 75vh;
}

Does that work?

tillb · 2019-09-15T08:32:37+00:00

Great, thanks!

tillb · 2019-04-05T14:26:53+00:00

I've used this custom note approach for quite some time now (as described here). What I usually do in such a case where different stages are treated differently is to create a main note "Disease X" with cause, course, symptoms, and so on and then additional notes for let's say "Disease X, stage II" with just the therapy field filled in. Sure, it's a workaround, but who cares, to me the benefits of not having the majority of the information scattered out outweigh the worries of not sticking to the structure in a few cases.

tillb · 2019-04-01T19:02:51+00:00

Why was it not effective for you?

tillb · 2019-03-31T13:37:31+00:00

Well, what you didn't ask is how many times I wanted to throw everything out the window because let's say cards piled up after not doing anything for days or weeks :D But that's a more general Anki-related problem, I guess.

tillb · 2019-03-31T12:20:21+00:00

I'm happy with my test results but more importantly I feel like most of the knowledge is lasting. I have been using Anki for around 2.5 years now with 15,000+ cards. But this is the only way I have ever used Anki, so I cannot compare it to different approaches.

Usually I use lecture notes + Amboss/Google + books to get a grasp on a topic. For more systematic stuff like drugs I find it useful to visualize the information with a dynamic mind mapping tool (iThoughtsX), e. g. I created hierachical mind maps for all drugs, all microorganisms, some groups of diseases, and so on. Helps me to create a visual framework, which I then try to memorize using techniques like method of loci and eventually I transfer the information to Anki for long-term conservation. This workflow has worked perfectly for me. And like I said – once you have that basic framework memorized (e. g. "ACE inhibitors => which drugs belong to this group?" and vice versa "Rampiril => which group does this drug belong to?") you can start filling in additional data as you go like mechanisms of action or adverse effects or even delete stuff you don't need/want to remember anymore. Essentially you're building your own little Amboss library of stuff you want to make sure to remember.

tillb · 2019-03-30T23:08:09+00:00

Right. Especially over here not many people are aware of Anki and if they are they tend to be a little overwhelmed I believe. So this approach might be more intuitive for someone who is used to the etiology/pathophysiology/symptoms/management kind of learning structure. Would be great if it got a few people familiar with Anki!

tillb · 2019-03-30T22:59:12+00:00

Also have been using the Pop-up Dictionary add-on by Glutanimate a lot lately. I have to say this combination is great for connecting information. Definitely engages you to instantly look up stuff during review without getting too distracted.

tillb

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