book-to-skill
Turn any technical book PDF into a Claude Code skill — ready to study, reference, and use while you work.
book-to-skill is an agent skill that transforms technical books, PDFs, and documentation into structured, queryable skills for AI coding assistants. It extracts key frameworks, patterns, and chapter-specific knowledge from documents, creating on-demand reference materials that agents can load contextually rather than processing entire books repeatedly. The tool supports PDF, EPUB, DOCX, Markdown, HTML, RTF, and MOBI formats, generating a modular skill structure with a core SKILL.md file, individual chapter files, glossaries, and pattern catalogs. By distilling books into structured knowledge that loads only relevant sections, it reduces token usage by 24×–51× compared to dumping full documents into context.
Key Features
Use Cases
- 01Convert technical reference books into queryable skills for quick lookups while coding
- 02Transform internal architecture decision records and runbooks into on-demand agent references
- 03Create searchable skills from brand guidelines and design systems for consistent team usage
- 04Build unified skills from research paper collections that update as new papers arrive
- 05Turn API specifications and compliance documentation into structured reference materials
- 06Extract onboarding guides and company documentation into agent-accessible knowledge bases
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book-to-skill — FAQ
What is book-to-skill?+
book-to-skill is an agent skill converter that transforms technical books, PDFs, and documentation into structured skills compatible with the Agent Skills standard. It creates modular, on-demand reference materials for AI coding assistants like GitHub Copilot CLI, Amp, and Claude Code.
How do I install book-to-skill?+
Install via npx skills add virgiliojr94/book-to-skill or manually clone the repository into your agent's skills directory (~/.claude/skills/, ~/.copilot/skills/, or ~/.agents/skills/ depending on your client). Once installed, use the /book-to-skill command to convert documents.
Which AI clients support book-to-skill?+
book-to-skill works with any client that supports the open Agent Skills standard, including GitHub Copilot CLI, Amp, and Claude Code. All clients read the same SKILL.md format.
Do I need API keys or dependencies?+
No API keys are required. For PDF extraction, you may need optional tools like pdftotext (poppler-utils), pypdf, or docling for technical books. For EPUB, install ebooklib and beautifulsoup4. Run python3 scripts/extract.py --check to see which extractors are installed and get exact installation commands for missing dependencies.
Is book-to-skill free to use?+
Yes, book-to-skill is free and open-source under the MIT license. All processing happens locally on your machine with no external uploads or service fees.
What file formats does it support?+
book-to-skill supports PDF, EPUB, DOCX, HTML, RTF, MOBI, AZW, AZW3, plain text, Markdown, reStructuredText, and AsciiDoc. Scanned PDFs require OCR preprocessing with tools like ocrmypdf before conversion.
How do I install book-to-skill?+
Open the source repository on GitHub and follow its README. book-to-skill is a skill — MCP Agents Market links you directly to the official repo.
Is book-to-skill free?+
book-to-skill is an open-source project hosted on GitHub. Check the repository for its license and any usage requirements.