seanx10m To Kindle
Sends a local document to your Kindle by email, converting first when the format isn't one Send-to-Kindle accepts.
Usage
~/.claude/skills/to-kindle/scripts/to-kindle.sh <file> [more files...]
~/.claude/skills/to-kindle/scripts/to-kindle.sh --reflow paper.pdf
~/.claude/skills/to-kindle/scripts/to-kindle.sh --outdir ~/Desktop notes.md
One email per file. Prints SENT / SKIP / WARN / FAIL per file and exits
non-zero if any failed.
| Flag | Effect |
|---|---|
--reflow |
Subject becomes Convert, so Amazon reflows a PDF into Kindle format. Ignored for non-PDFs. --convert still works as an alias. |
--keep |
Keep converted intermediates instead of deleting the temp dir. |
--outdir DIR |
Where converted files land. Implies --keep. |
Format policy
- Sent as-is:
epub pdf doc docx txt rtf htm html png gif jpg jpeg bmp - Converted to EPUB first:
md markdown mobi azw3 azw fb2 odt lit pdb rst textile org tex latex docbook ipynb - Anything else: warns and sends anyway.
Conversion prefers ebook-convert (calibre) when installed, and falls back to
pandoc for the markup formats. The ebook-only formats (mobi, azw3, fb2, lit, pdb)
need calibre - brew install --cask calibre. Everything pandoc handles works
out of the box.
Prefer a real EPUB over a reflowed PDF
Kindle can't reflow a PDF, so zoom means panning around a shrunken fixed page - no
font control, no dictionary, no real TOC. --reflow hands the job to Amazon's
converter, which is mediocre on long or multi-column documents. If a genuine EPUB
of the same document exists (Project Gutenberg, the publisher, Standard Ebooks),
fetch that instead of reflowing the PDF. Markdown is not a Kindle format; it
gets converted to EPUB here, which is the right answer anyway.
Cropping a PDF's margins to reading width (k2pdfopt) is possible but still yields
a fixed-layout page. Not worth it when an EPUB is available.
Prerequisites
himalayaconfigured at~/.config/himalaya/config.tomlwith thepersonalaccount. Verify withhimalaya mailbox list.your-amazon-account@example.commust be on Amazon's Approved Personal Document E-mail List (Amazon → Manage Your Content and Devices → Preferences → Personal Document Settings). If a send succeeds but nothing lands on the device, this is almost always why.- Destination is
YOUR_KINDLE_ADDR@kindle.com, overridable withKINDLE_ADDR. - Files over 50MB are skipped (Amazon's per-email limit) - checked after conversion.
Delivery is asynchronous
SENT means Gmail accepted the message, not that the Kindle has it. Amazon usually
delivers within a few minutes over Wi-Fi. Don't report it as landed on the device -
tell the user it's sent and to check the Kindle.