Mr Pepys's Diary 1660–1669

How this site was made

How this site was made

One person, working with a team of AI agents. Nothing they produced was taken on trust: every piece of work was checked by an agent that hadn't made it, the hard calls came back to a person, and software checks every quotation against the diary each time the site is built. This page is a map of that work.

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Every day of the diary, 1 January 1660 to 31 May 1669: a strip for each year, a thin bar for each day, coloured by his mood that day from low to high. All 3,412 entries were read, every one in full.

Who did what

Person Marcus White

  • Decided what the site is for: somewhere to wander nine years of one man's days, more fun than flicking through the diary itself.
  • Set the rules the work had to follow, the first being that accuracy comes before comfort.
  • Made the calls the agents couldn't: what each part should do, and what to do when reviewers disagreed.
  • Read the work and sent it back. He found Deb Willet and Elizabeth missing from days they appear in, and 54 days were added, each checked against its entry.
  • Watches how real visitors use the site, and turns that into work: the first day's figures showed the Fire's buttons answering too slowly, and they now answer in about half the time.
  • Approves every change before it goes live.

AI agents Claude

  • The agents are Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, working in Claude Code, each to a written brief.
  • Read all 3,412 entries and wrote each one's mood, summary and best line, and listed the people and places.
  • Traced the twelve stories, drew the Fire map, transcribed the plague bills, and wrote the pages for teachers.
  • Designed, built and tested the site itself: its code, layout, accessibility and speed.
  • Checked one another. Every piece of work went to an agent that hadn't made it, often several, each with one job: accuracy, framing, a newcomer's eye, a teacher's.

Software Scripts and tests

  • Refuse any quotation that isn't the exact words of that day's entry.
  • Run over 650 checks before every release: the words, the data, every layout from a small phone to a wide screen, accessibility in light and dark, and speed.

The map

Each stage made something, and each was checked before the next began. The labels say who did the work: Person AI agents Software.

The map at a glance: who did what at each stage. Each stage links to its details below.
StagePersonAI agentsSoftware
1 The briefDecides the purpose and the rulesWrites the plans and briefs
2 The textSplits Wheatley's text into days
3 Agreeing how to readTen readers score the same days
4 Reading every entryEvery entry read in fullRefuses any inexact quotation
5 The auditRe-read a tenth; answer every finding
6 TestingDecides what agents can'tSeven testers, one job each
7 Reviewing the wordsFour reviewers, two rounds
8 The storiesSettles disagreementsWriter, checker, then panelFinds candidate days
9 The set piecesDesigned by three, built by twoProves the fire map's rules
10 For teachersResearch, fact-check, a teacher's readChecks every source's quotes
11 Every buildApproves every changeChecks every quotation, and more
12 After launchReads visitors' figuresFinds the cause, fixes itA new test guards it

Stage by stage

  1. The brief

    Decided Person
    What the site is for: somewhere to wander nine years of one man's days. Who it is for, and the rules the work follows, the first being that accuracy comes before comfort.
    Made AI agents
    The plans and the written briefs for the stages that follow, each with its own checks.

  2. The text

    Made Software
    The edition of Henry B. Wheatley (1893), from Project Gutenberg, split into one file per day, with his notes kept apart from Pepys's words. It is the only diary text used.
    Checked Software
    Everything after this stage is checked against these files.

  3. Agreeing how to read

    Made AI agents
    Ten readers, one for each year of the diary, and a written template saying what to record for each day and how.
    Checked AI agents
    Before any year was read, all ten scored the same fifteen days. No two scores on any day were more than a point apart, and twelve of the fifteen days were unanimous. Six rules for the hard cases were written down before the real reading began.

  4. Reading every entry

    Made AI agents
    All 3,412 entries, read in full. For each: his mood that day, from −2 to +2; a summary of forty words or fewer; his best line; the people he met and the places he went; plays, vows and money.
    Checked Software
    A quotation that isn't the exact words of that day's entry is refused when it is saved, and so is one taken from Wheatley's notes instead of Pepys.

  5. The audit

    Checked AI agents
    A separate agent re-read a random tenth of every year, 331 days, and raised 101 findings. Each pair of neighbouring years checked twenty of each other's days: 225 more checks.
    Fixed AI agents
    Every finding was answered by the year's reader: 230 fixed, 14 kept with a reason, 4 disputed from the text. Then all 300 answers were checked again: 296 confirmed, 4 fixed a second time.
    Changed AI agents
    The first pass tightened the template itself: “people” means people he met in person; no identification without a reason in the text; one form of each name; “money” means his own.
    The audit in three bars

    What the sample of 331 days found: 101 findings

    • 5 errors of fact
    • 11 omissions
    • 64 inconsistencies
    • 21 matters of style

    How the readers answered, with the neighbours' findings: 248 answers

    • 230 fixed
    • 14 kept, with a reason
    • 4 disputed from the text

    Every answer checked again: 300 checks

    • 296 confirmed
    • 4 fixed a second time

  6. Testing the first version

    Checked AI agents
    A reader who had seen none of the work used every control on a phone, in both themes: sixteen findings, all fixed. Then six testers, each with one job: a newcomer; the look of every screen; accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA; every one of the 3,439 squares and every link; a historian of Restoration England reading every quotation; and speed.
    Checked AI agents
    The lead tester re-ran the six most serious claims before acting on them. All six held.
    Decided Person
    Fifty-four changes followed. Eight questions that were not the agents' to decide went to Marcus.

  7. Reviewing the words

    Checked AI agents
    Four reviewers, working independently: the accuracy of the day summaries; the accuracy of the page's own text; its framing (how it describes the women, the servants and the violence in his life); and a newcomer's read. Eighty-five findings, each decided; a second round confirmed every fix.
    Fixed AI agents
    About a hundred summaries were rewritten, and five hundred given a house-style pass.

  8. The twelve stories

    Made Software
    A script, with no AI, finds the candidate days for each story.
    Made AI agents
    A writer reads every candidate day and tells the story in 23–25 dated steps, in Pepys's own words where it can.
    Checked AI agents
    A second agent, told to look for faults, checks every step against its entry: the meaning in context, the date, anything softened or invented. It also checks that the days belong (a sample of thirty, nine in ten must) and that none are missing (the busiest month and one at random, read in full). 235 findings across the twelve, each fixed and the fix confirmed.
    Checked AI agents
    Then a panel of two or three fresh reviewers (accuracy and framing, and a newcomer for the most sensitive stories), each of whom must pass it: 307 findings more. All twelve are approved.
    Decided Person
    Where reviewers disagreed, Marcus decided.
    Findings on each story: from the checker and then from the panel .
    1. The failing light12 + 11
    2. Elizabeth29 + 36
    3. Deb Willet32 + 41
    4. Other women30 + 35
    5. The household38 + 32
    6. The family10 + 16
    7. From £40 to £6,90014 + 20
    8. Patrons18 + 23
    9. The Dutch war, from his desk15 + 29
    10. Making the Navy work10 + 26
    11. Music15 + 23
    12. Curiosity12 + 15

  9. The Fire and the other set pieces

    Made AI agents
    The Fire was designed by three agents (the story, the map and the layout) and built by two. Its burnt area grows between outlines for each midnight drawn from the London Gazette, John Evelyn and Pepys, and reaches each place he saw burning when he saw it. The plague figures were transcribed from the weekly bills of 1665.
    Checked Software
    Tests prove the burnt area never shrinks and never crosses itself, meets each midnight's outline, keeps its distance from his house, and has reached each burning place he names by the time he names it.

  10. The pages for teachers

    Made AI agents
    Two rounds of research, from named sources. Anything that couldn't be verified was left out. Where the sources disagree, the pages say so.
    Checked AI agents
    A fact-check against the sources (one error and thirteen warnings, all fixed), and a reading as a teacher, which reshaped the lesson sequences, the pupil cards, the safeguarding notes and the printing.
    Checked Software
    Quotations from the Gazette, Evelyn and the Lord Mayor's orders are checked against copies of the originals on every build, like Pepys's.

  11. Every build

    Checked Software
    Every quotation on the site, 4,400+ of them, is checked word for word against the diary, including words quoted inside a summary. One that doesn't match stops the build.
    Checked Software
    Over 650 checks run before every release: the data, every layout from 320 px wide up, accessibility in light and dark, links, and speed budgets.

  12. After launch

    Watched Person
    Marcus reads how real visitors use the site and sends work back.
    Fixed AI agents
    The first day's figures showed the Fire map's buttons answering too slowly on some devices. The agents traced why and rebuilt how the map draws, checked that every step still looks the same, and added a test so it can't slip back. The buttons now answer in about half the time.

What the checking caught

Some of the mistakes that checking found before they reached you:

What it can't tell you

What it took

The figures are Claude Code's own records of the work so far, and they grow as the site does. A token is a piece of a word: thirteen million of them is millions of words of reading notes, drafts, code and checks, most of which never appear on the site. The price is what that much use would cost a developer, converted from US dollars.

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Reading the diary here

Reading him today

The diary records the attitudes of its author and his time: violence towards servants and his wife, sexual coercion of women who depended on him, and contempt for Jews, Catholics and others. We quote him as he wrote and have not softened it. Where he wrote about sex in a private mix of French, Spanish and Latin, our summaries say plainly what he describes.

The text

Every quotation comes from the edition of Henry B. Wheatley (1838–1917), a Victorian editor, published from 1893 and now on Project Gutenberg. Quotations are copied exactly, spelling included, and each links to that day's page on pepysdiary.com. No text from Latham & Matthews (1970–83, in copyright) is reproduced here; pepysdiary.com, which we link to, restores some passages from it.

Wheatley printed nearly everything, leaving out passages he judged unprintable, mostly about sex. Wheatley says he marked every cut; 129 of the 3,412 entries carry such a mark. On the grid they have a small corner square, and their mood scores describe only what Wheatley printed: a cut entry is not a quiet day. Another 45 entries contain a three-dot gap that may be a cut or may be Pepys's own pause; their day cards say so, but the grid does not mark them.

Wheatley's text runs to about 1.18 million words. Nineteen days have no entry in it: eleven days (30 September – 10 October 1668) when Pepys was away in the country and left the pages blank; six days missing from the Project Gutenberg text, which pepysdiary.com fills from Latham & Matthews; 4 September 1664, whose heading is missing (part of that day may sit at the end of 3 September); and 11 April 1668, which Pepys's rough notes for those days skip. A further eight days are covered by entries that run several days together.

Dates are Pepys's own, in the Old Style (Julian) calendar, then ten days behind the one used today, with the year counted from 1 January; none have been converted. Pepys writes pounds as L (L350 is £350): quotations keep his L, and our own words use £. For scale, his salary as Clerk of the Acts was £350 a year.

The mood scores

Each day was scored from −2 (distressed, frightened or furious) to +2 (delighted) for Pepys's own state of mind, not for how good or bad the day's events were: 0 means his mood was even, not that the day was unremarkable. A score is a reader's judgement, not a measurement. Treat the colours as a guide to where to read, not as data about Pepys's psychology.

Places, people and the map

Places and people were identified from the text, with pepysdiary.com's encyclopedia as a check; anything not identified with confidence is marked uncertain rather than guessed.

The people and places are matched to each day by the names and spellings the diary uses, never guessed: about four in five mentions of a person, and nearly all mentions of a place, are matched. The rest are left out: people who appear only a few times and have no entry of their own, and unnamed places such as “a coffee-house”. A place marked approximate on the map stands at a modern landmark or street on or near a building that has gone.

The Fire map's base is the modern City from OpenStreetMap, and its landmark labels were placed by hand. The river is today's Thames, which Victorian embankments have narrowed since 1666, and the burnt areas are approximate outlines drawn from the sources below.

Sources

Explore the diary