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πŸ¦€ ClawHub

Book Reader - Learn & Grow Every Day

by @josharsh

Read EPUB, PDF, or TXT books from multiple sources with progress tracking, smart chunking, and summary extraction for efficient learning.

Versionv1.0.0
Downloads2,066
Installs10
Stars⭐ 5
TERMINAL
clawhub install book-reader

πŸ“– About This Skill

book-reader

Read books (epub, pdf, txt) from various sources with progress tracking.

Purpose

Enable AI agents to read full-length books for learning, summarization, and knowledge extraction.

Features

  • Multiple sources: Anna's Archive, Project Gutenberg, local files
  • Format support: EPUB, PDF, TXT
  • Progress tracking: Remember where you left off
  • Smart chunking: Read books in digestible sections
  • Summary generation: Extract key insights as you read
  • Tools Required

  • curl or wget - Download books
  • pandoc - Convert EPUB to text (optional, fallback to python)
  • pdftotext (poppler-utils) - Extract PDF text
  • Python 3 with ebooklib and beautifulsoup4 (for EPUB parsing)
  • Usage

    Search for a book

    ./book-reader.sh search "Thinking Fast and Slow"
    

    Download a book

    ./book-reader.sh download  [output-file]
    

    Read a book (with progress tracking)

    ./book-reader.sh read  [--from-page N] [--pages N]
    

    Show reading progress

    ./book-reader.sh status
    

    Installation

    # Install dependencies
    sudo apt-get install poppler-utils pandoc  # Linux
    

    brew install poppler pandoc # macOS

    pip3 install ebooklib beautifulsoup4 lxml

    Make executable

    chmod +x book-reader.sh

    Book Sources

    1. Project Gutenberg (70k+ public domain books) - API: https://gutendex.com - Free, legal, no DRM

    2. Anna's Archive (shadow library) - Millions of books, papers, comics - Legal gray area depending on jurisdiction - Use responsibly

    3. Local files (your own epub/pdf collection)

    Reading State

    Progress tracked in ~/.openclaw/workspace/memory/reading-state.json:

    {
      "currentBook": "Thinking, Fast and Slow",
      "file": "/path/to/book.epub",
      "totalPages": 499,
      "pagesRead": 127,
      "lastRead": 1770957900,
      "bookmarks": [50, 200],
      "notes": "Interesting insight about System 1 vs System 2..."
    }
    

    Example Workflow

    # Find the book
    ./book-reader.sh search "Daniel Kahneman Thinking"

    Download it

    ./book-reader.sh download 12345 ~/books/thinking-fast-slow.epub

    Start reading

    ./book-reader.sh read ~/books/thinking-fast-slow.epub --pages 50

    Continue later

    ./book-reader.sh read ~/books/thinking-fast-slow.epub --pages 50

    Check progress

    ./book-reader.sh status

    Privacy & Ethics

  • Public domain books (Gutenberg): Fully legal
  • Copyrighted books: Check your local laws
  • Consider buying books you find valuable to support authors
  • Use for personal learning, not redistribution
  • Limitations

  • PDF OCR quality varies
  • DRM-protected books not supported (by design)
  • Large PDFs may be slow to parse
  • EPUB formatting may be imperfect in plain text

  • Use responsibly. Support authors when possible.

    πŸ’‘ Examples

    Search for a book

    ./book-reader.sh search "Thinking Fast and Slow"
    

    Download a book

    ./book-reader.sh download  [output-file]
    

    Read a book (with progress tracking)

    ./book-reader.sh read  [--from-page N] [--pages N]
    

    Show reading progress

    ./book-reader.sh status