Book-to-Skill — Turn Technical Books into Agent Skills

Introduction

Book-to-Skill is an open-source tool that transforms technical book PDFs into structured skill files for AI coding agents. Instead of manually extracting knowledge from reference books, it automates the conversion so your agent can access expert-level domain knowledge during coding sessions.

What Book-to-Skill Does

• Parses PDF books with OCR and text extraction for clean content
• Chunks book content into coherent topic-based sections
• Generates structured skill markdown files with summaries and key concepts
• Produces agent-ready reference material indexed by topic
• Supports batch processing of multiple books into a unified skill library

Architecture Overview

The tool uses a multi-stage pipeline: PDF parsing (via PyMuPDF or pdfplumber) extracts raw text, an LLM summarizes and structures each chapter into skill-format markdown, and a post-processor organizes the output into files compatible with agent skill directories. The chunking strategy respects chapter and section boundaries rather than using fixed token windows.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Clone the repository and install dependencies with pip
• Requires an LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or Ollama for local processing)
• Configure output format and chunk size in config.yaml
• Place generated skills in your agent's skill directory for immediate use
• Supports custom templates for different skill file formats

Key Features

• Intelligent chapter-aware chunking that preserves logical structure
• Generates both summary cards and detailed reference sections per topic
• Works with scanned PDFs through built-in OCR support
• Customizable output templates for different agent frameworks
• Incremental updates when new editions of a book are released

Comparison with Similar Tools

• MarkItDown — converts files to markdown but without skill structuring; Book-to-Skill adds agent-ready formatting
• Docling — general document parser; Book-to-Skill is purpose-built for technical book-to-skill conversion
• MinerU — extracts LLM-ready data from documents; Book-to-Skill focuses on structured skill generation
• Marker — PDF-to-markdown converter; Book-to-Skill adds summarization and topic indexing
• Manual CLAUDE.md writing — time-consuming for large books; Book-to-Skill automates the process

FAQ

Q: What book formats are supported? A: PDF is the primary format. The tool handles both text-based and scanned PDFs with OCR fallback.

Q: Can I use this with local LLMs? A: Yes, configure an Ollama endpoint for fully offline processing without API costs.

Q: How large can the input book be? A: There is no hard limit. Books are processed chapter by chapter, so even 1000+ page references work within normal memory constraints.

Q: Which agent frameworks are supported for output? A: The default output is compatible with Claude Code skills, but templates can be customized for Cursor rules, Codex, and other frameworks.

Sources

• https://github.com/virgiliojr94/book-to-skill