Metadata extraction - title, author, publisher, date, language
Table of contents - view chapter structure with chapter references ([ch: N])
Chapter reading - read specific chapters by number
Full extraction - extract entire book as markdown
Search - find text with surrounding context
Open-ended search - broad queries are automatically expanded using Claude's domain knowledge

Installation#

The skill is installed at ~/.claude/skills/epub/. Restart Claude Code after installation for the skill to be discovered.

Usage#

Just ask Claude naturally about EPUB files:

"What's in this EPUB file?"
"Show me the table of contents"
"Read chapter 5"
"Search for 'democracy' in the book"
"Extract the entire book as markdown"
"What does the book say about the main character's motivation?" (open-ended queries work too!)

Claude will automatically use this skill when it detects EPUB-related requests.

CLI Commands#

The skill uses a TypeScript CLI tool under the hood:

# View metadata
node ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader/dist/index.js metadata "book.epub"

# List table of contents
node ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader/dist/index.js toc "book.epub"

# Read specific chapter (1-indexed)
node ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader/dist/index.js chapter "book.epub" 3

# Extract entire book
node ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader/dist/index.js full "book.epub"

# Search for text
node ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader/dist/index.js search "book.epub" "query"

Technology Stack#

TypeScript - main implementation language
jszip - extract EPUB contents (EPUBs are ZIP archives)
xml2js - parse OPF/NCX metadata files
turndown - convert HTML content to Markdown
commander - CLI argument parsing

Development#

To modify and rebuild:

cd ~/.claude/skills/epub/scripts/epub-reader
npm install
npm run build

Restart Claude Code after any changes to SKILL.md.

License#

MIT

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