Book to skill distillation

book-to-skill-distillation

Convert a linear human text into a branching agent-native skill. Distillation here is not a summary and not a compressed copy: it is a rewrite into the forms an agent can call while working — routers, decision trees, checklists, schemas, prompts, scripts, validation gates, worked examples, and reference modules.

Keep SKILL.md as the router; put depth in reference/, reusable forms in assets/, deterministic helpers in scripts/, and project-private extraction substrate under work/book-distill/<slug>/.

Lifecycle

Scout source → Recover structure → Extract/OCR substrate → Design target skill → Split by agent-native units → Rewrite in parallel → Reconcile → Validate & publish

Router

Situation	Read next
understand the core transformation	reference/agent-native-rewrite.md
classify PDF/EPUB/source	reference/source-triage.md
scanned PDF / blank pdftotext / full OCR	reference/scanned-pdf-recipe.md
recover table of contents	reference/toc-recovery.md
map book to skill tree	reference/outline-design.md
use daemons in parallel	reference/daemon-orchestration.md, assets/daemon-task-template.md
copyright concern	reference/copyright-discipline.md
validate/publish	reference/validation-checklist.md, reference/publishing.md
calibrate on this run	reference/worked-example-legal-dd.md

Quick start

1. Create work/book-distill/<slug>/ and keep source-derived OCR/transcripts there, not inside the published skill.
2. Run scripts/scout.sh <source.pdf> work/book-distill/<slug> or equivalent inspection; decide whether the source has a text layer.
3. Recover the source structure: TOC, headings, page offsets, chapter boundaries, appendices, and repeated schemas.
4. If scanned/image-only, build full-text OCR as private substrate, then split it into topic files by page range.
5. Design the target skill tree before rewriting: trigger, exclusions, primary routing axis, reference modules, assets, scripts, caveats, and validation plan.
6. Fan out daemons: each daemon rewrites one topic or coherent topic group into agent-native structures, not into a chapter summary.
7. Parent reconciles, removes duplication, verifies current-law/current-fact deltas, and enforces copyright-safe abstraction.
8. Validate, refresh, and smoke-test realistic prompts.

Output test

A good distilled skill lets an agent answer: “What do I do next on this task?” without rereading the book. If the output mostly says what the book said in the same order, it is not yet agent-native.