Book To Skill

Book-to-Skill — Prose Chapter to Automated Skill Pipeline

Turn a how-to chapter or long-form draft into a fully structured Claude Code skill. This is the prose sibling of video-to-skill: identical pipeline, only the front-end extractor changes (read text instead of sending a screen recording to the Gemini video API). Phases 3-5 and the skill shape are shared field-for-field with video-to-skill, "one schema, not two."

Scope

EXTRACT-THE-METHOD only: a chapter that teaches a procedure becomes a runnable skill. Narrative, analogy, or argument chapters with no extractable procedure yield nothing (halt with [NO_METHOD]). Consult-the-book (book-as-Q&A) is a separate future sibling, explicitly OUT of scope here.

Prerequisites

• skill-creator skill available (for final skill generation)
• Read access to the source text (a chapter or draft .md / .txt file you provide)
• No Gemini API key and no ffmpeg required (text in, not video)

Phase 1: Source Preparation

1. User provides (or names) a book/chapter/draft text file (.md, .txt).
2. Read the full file. Confirm it contains a teachable PROCEDURE, not just narrative.
3. If the chapter is purely narrative/analogy with no extractable steps, output [NO_METHOD] and halt. Do not fabricate a procedure that isn't on the page.

Phase 2: SOP Extraction from Prose

Read the chapter text and produce the most comprehensive, detailed SOP of the process it teaches. Account for:

• Every step the author describes, in order, including setup and teardown
• Stated rules, constraints, and "always / never" guidance
• Style and quality preferences the author expresses (what they like/dislike and why)
• Decision points where the author chooses one option over another and why
• Worked examples and the reasoning behind them
• Tacit knowledge stated in passing (asides, caveats, "the trick is...")

Structure the SOP as numbered phases with sub-steps. Flag "tacit knowledge nuggets" separately at the end. Save the extracted SOP to a working directory (e.g., /tmp/book-to-skill/sop-{name}.md).

Phase 3: SOP Review (Human-in-the-Loop)

Present the extracted SOP summary to the user. Ask:

• Does this accurately capture the procedure the chapter teaches?
• Any steps missing or misinterpreted?
• Any tacit knowledge nuggets that are wrong or need emphasis?

Incorporate feedback before proceeding.

Phase 4: Skill Generation

Invoke the skill-creator skill with the reviewed SOP as input.

Key instructions for skill-creator:

• Use the SOP as the ground truth for the skill's phases
• Preserve all tacit knowledge as explicit rules or preferences in the skill
• Add AskUserQuestion checkpoints at decision points identified in the SOP (minimal HIL)
• Include source attribution in the skill frontmatter (book title, chapter, author)
• Style preferences from the SOP become hard rules in the skill, not suggestions

Phase 5: Validation

1. Read the generated SKILL.md
2. Verify all SOP phases are represented
3. Verify tacit knowledge nuggets are encoded as rules
4. Use claude-code-guide agent to validate skill structure
5. Test invocation in a fresh session

When NOT to Use This

• The chapter is narrative/analogy with no repeatable procedure (output [NO_METHOD])
• The procedure is a one-off that won't be repeated
• A screen recording of the process exists and the tacit knowledge is visual — use video-to-skill instead

Source Attribution

Prose sibling of video-to-skill (technique from Mark Kashef, "You've Never Made a Claude Code Skill Like This", 2026-03-23). book-to-skill adapts the same extract -> review -> generate -> validate pipeline to text input.