Getting it into your agent
One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.
npx agentmods add skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/book-distillnpx skills add melodic-software/claude-code-plugins --skill book-distillgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/melodic-software/claude-code-pluginsWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/book-distill)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/book-distill"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/melodic-software/claude-code-plugins/book-distill.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00170 | $0.03715 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00085 | $0.01858 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00034 | $0.00743 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00017 | $0.00371 |
Grade A, and why
book-distill scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 192 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Book-to-Skill Distillation
Transform technical books into structured skill reference files that provide the WHY behind decisions during development. This is a multi-session process. Each session handles ~3 chapters. The skill produces concept-organized reference files with author attribution, suitable for progressive disclosure in Claude Code skills.
The reference files are written into a target skill, either an existing skill you extend or a new one you create, inside the consuming project (${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}/.claude/skills/<target-slug>/). Name the target skill when you invoke the tool. Slugify the target name (lowercase alphanumerics and hyphens only. Strip /, \, and ..) before building any path, and verify the resolved directory stays under ${CLAUDE_PROJECT_DIR}/.claude/skills/ before writing.
Example shape: a testing skill distilled from two books, Beck's Test-Driven Development by Example and Khorikov's Unit Testing, producing ~14 reference files, with shared files where the authors overlap.
Usage caution. Copyright
This tool is a neutral distiller: it applies a method, it does not judge what you feed it. A condensation of a copyrighted book is a derivative work (17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 106), the rights holder's exclusive rights include preparing and distributing derivatives. Keeping a private distillation for your own study is a different act from publishing, committing, or sharing one; fair use is a defense raised after the fact, not a safe harbor you can assume in advance. You own the rights decision for every book you distill and for where its outputs go. Distribute or publish a distilled output only once you have satisfied yourself that doing so is lawful for that book. This is a caution, not legal advice.
Quick decision guide
- "New skill or extend existing?" → If the book's discipline matches an existing skill (e.g., a testing book matches a testing skill), extend it. Otherwise create a new skill
- "One file per chapter or per concept?" → Per concept. Chapters often split across concepts or overlap
- "How many sessions will this take?" → Roughly: total chapters / 3, plus 1-2 sessions for merges, SKILL.md update, and polish
- "PDF or EPUB?" → PDF works natively with the Read tool (
pages: "1-20"). EPUB requires unzipping and text extraction. PDF is simpler - "How do I resume across sessions?" → The continuation prompt (generated at session end) tells the next session exactly where to pick up
What ships with it
3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- yesterday First seen · 192 lines · 170 tokens per session scan A 6be701ab26be
book-distill is a skill published in the GitHub repository melodic-software/claude-code-plugins (15 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 170 tokens to every session and 3,715 once invoked, about $0.0009 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.
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