Skip to content
Get packs

book-to-skill

Turns a technical book or document folder into a structured skill your AI coding agent can query.

GitHub Download v1.4.0
Stars
36.7k
Forks
3.9k
Licence
MIT
Language
Python
Last update
9 days ago
Type
Dev tool

What it is

book-to-skill takes a technical book PDF (or other documents such as EPUB, DOCX, or Markdown, per the README badges) and converts it into an agent skill: a folder with a core SKILL.md, per-chapter files, a glossary, patterns, and a cheatsheet. It is meant to be loaded by AI coding agents like Claude Code so you can ask questions about the book while you work, and the README says this uses fewer tokens than pasting the whole book into context.

  • Run /book-to-skill on a PDF to create a skill folder under ~/.agents/skills/
  • Ask the agent a question like /my-book replication to get an answer drawn from a specific chapter
  • Fold a docs/ folder of architecture decision records into one skill
  • Combine several papers and your own notes into a single research skill

Great for

  • Developers who want to query a technical book from inside their coding agent
  • People who re-read reference material often and want it searchable by an agent
  • Teams turning internal docs, runbooks, or specs into a queryable skill
  • Users of hosts that support the Agent Skills standard, such as Claude Code or Codex

Not ideal for

  • People who only want to read a book normally, since the output is a skill for agents, not a reading app
  • Users without an AI agent host, because the generated skill is meant to be loaded by one
  • Anyone needing verified accuracy on legal or safety-critical content, since the README does not describe a review process for correctness
Step-by-step guide: how to use book-to-skillInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs
book-to-skill alternativesbook-to-skill vs planning-with-filesbook-to-skill vs claude-obsidianbook-to-skill vs Trail-code

How to get it

  1. 1

    Install with a package manager

    You'll need: An AI agent host such as Claude Code, Copilot CLI, Codex, or OpenCode · git (for the manual install)

    Install via the cross-agent skills CLI

    npx skills add virgiliojr94/book-to-skill

    Or clone manually into Claude Code skills folder

    git clone https://github.com/virgiliojr94/book-to-skill.git ~/.claude/skills/book-to-skill
  2. 2

    Run it

    • Install the skill using one of the install commands
    • Open your agent host (for example Claude Code)
    • Run /book-to-skill ./my-book.pdf on your file
    • Once generated, ask the agent a question using /your-book-slug followed by a topic
  3. 3

    Get the most out of it

    • Use the analyze-only and generate-from-analysis modes described in docs/usage.md to review before generating
    • Use update/fold-in mode to add new material to an existing skill, as the README describes
    • Read docs/how-it-works.md to understand extraction modes and token budgets
    • Check docs/faq.md and docs/install.md for host-specific paths (Hermes Agent, OpenClaw, OpenCode)

Downloads

Source code (.zip)master branch · straight from GitHubRelease v1.4.0Release notes and source

Strengths

  • The README describes a structured output with on-demand chapter loading, which keeps context small
  • Works across several agent hosts that share the open Agent Skills SKILL.md format
  • MIT licensed and actively pushed

Trade-offs

  • The README's token-savings figures come from the project's own measurements on real books; treat them as its claims
  • Output quality depends on the source file and on the agent following the generator spec; scanned PDFs have needed fixes according to the README's use-case notes
  • Publishing to GitHub is optional and private by default, but the README mentions it, so users should review that step

How it compares

ProjectStarsTypeLevelUpdatedBest for
book-to-skill (this)36.7kDev toolintermediate9 days agoDevelopers who want to query a technical book from inside their coding agent
PageIndex40kLibraryintermediate7 days agoDevelopers building question-answering over long PDFs such as annual reports or manuals
Prompt-Engineering-Guide79.8kLearning resourcebeginner8 months agoPeople who are new to prompting and want structured lessons with examples
agentic-awesome-skills49kDev toolintermediate4 days agoDevelopers using Codex or Claude who want agent-chosen instructions for a project
agents42.1kDev toolbeginner4 days agoDevelopers who already use one of the listed AI coding tools and want ready-made specialist agents
awesome-agent-skills36.8kCurated listbeginner4 days agoDevelopers who use Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or Gemini CLI and want ready-made skills

Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.