Read and search digital books (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT). Use when answering questions about a book, finding quotes or passages, navigating to specific pages or chapters, or extracting information from documents.
Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.
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---
name: book-reader
description: Read and search digital books (PDF, EPUB, MOBI, TXT). Use when answering questions about a book, finding quotes or passages, navigating to specific pages or chapters, or extracting information from documents.
---
# Book Reader
Read and query digital book formats from the command line using BM25 search.
## Quick Start
```bash
# Get book metadata
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py info ~/Books/mybook.pdf
# Show table of contents
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py toc ~/Books/mybook.epub
# Read a specific chapter
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py read ~/Books/mybook.pdf --chapter 3
# Read a specific page
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py read ~/Books/mybook.pdf --page 42
# Search for content (BM25 ranked)
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py search ~/Books/mybook.pdf "query"
# Extract full text
uv run ~/.claude/skills/book-reader/book.py extract ~/Books/mybook.txt
```
## Supported Formats
| Format | Extensions | Features |
| ------ | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------- |
| PDF | `.pdf` | Page numbers, TOC detection, metadata |
| EPUB | `.epub` | Chapters from spine, full metadata |
| MOBI | `.mobi`, `.azw`, `.azw3` | Basic extraction |
| Text | `.txt`, `.text`, `.md` | Chapter pattern detection |
## When to Use
- User provides a book file and asks questions about its content
- Need to find specific quotes, passages, or information
- Navigating to specific pages or chapters in a document
- Researching topics across digital books
- Extracting text for further processing
## How It Works
1. **First access**: Extracts and caches the book content
2. **Subsequent access**: Uses cached version (invalidates on file change)
3. **Search**: BM25 algorithm ranks results by relevance
4. **Results**: Include chapter/page location for reference
## See Also
See REFERENCE.md for complete command documentation.
