The gist

book-to-skill is an open-source command-line tool by Virgilio Jr. that transforms technical books and documents into structured Claude Code skills. It solves the problem of knowledge retention and retrieval from dense texts by creating an interactive, queryable version of the content. Instead of manually searching PDFs or relying on a model's fallible memory, users can load the book as a skill and reference its specific frameworks and glossaries directly within their Claude workflow.

What it does

Convert technical books and documents (PDF, EPUB, DOCX) into structured Claude Code skills.
Generate a complete skill package including per-chapter summaries, a glossary, and quick-reference cheatsheets.
Extract and format key content like code blocks, tables, design patterns, and glossaries for analysis.
Enable on-demand loading of specific book chapters to answer questions without consuming a large token budget.

How it works

The user runs a command-line script, providing a path to a document file (PDF, EPUB, etc.). The tool uses an appropriate extractor to convert the book to plain text, then uses Claude to analyze the structure. It generates a series of structured markdown files—including chapter summaries and a glossary—which are saved to the local Claude skills directory. The tool is open-source and runs within the user's local Claude Code environment.

Best for

This tool is ideal for developers and technical readers who want to go deep on a single book, embedding its specific frameworks and knowledge directly into their Claude coding workflow for frequent, grounded reference.

Watch out for

The tool is designed for deep analysis of a single document at a time, not for searching across a library of multiple books. Extraction for some document formats requires the user to manually install external command-line dependencies.