Book Club Management

Automate every aspect of running a recurring book club: research books, generate Slack messages, create session materials, and plan communication schedules.

When to Use This Skill

Trigger when the user:

Mentions "book club", "reading group", or "book of the month"
Asks to generate Slack messages about a book
Asks for discussion questions, reading guides, or session materials
Wants to announce, remind, or promote a book reading
Asks for a QR code, one-pager, or visual summary for a book
Wants a timeline or schedule for book club communications
Asks to scrape or look up book data from a URL

Commands

| Command | Description | |---------|-------------| | /bookclub:init [title] by [author] | Set up book of the month — research, enrich, save book-profile.json | | /bookclub:generate [type] | Generate any message or material (see types below) | | /bookclub:timeline [cadence] | Generate full communication schedule |

Generate Types

Slack messages (output: Block Kit JSON + mrkdwn):

announce — Book announcement with hook, dates, factoids, links
remind — Reading reminder (use --timing 1week|3days|tomorrow|today)
spark — Pre-reading thought-provoking questions
articles — Related articles/interviews roundup
recap — Post-session summary template

Documents (output: Markdown, optionally PDF with --pdf):

guide — Discussion guide with categorized questions
intro — Facilitator introduction script (3-5 min)
cards — Individual question cards for printing
one-pager — Visual summary with QR code

Workflow

1. /bookclub:init "Book Title" by Author Name
   → Researches book, saves book-profile.json

2. /bookclub:timeline monthly
   → Generates full schedule of messages and materials

3. /bookclub:generate announce
   → Generates announcement (repeat for each type as scheduled)

The book-profile.json is the single source of truth. All generate commands read from it.

Book Profile

The init command creates a book-profile.json containing:

Metadata: title, author, author_bio, publication_year, genre, page_count, isbn
Content: synopsis (paraphrased), themes, factoids, awards
Links: amazon, bookshop, goodreads, publisher, library
Articles: 3-5 related articles with title, source, url, summary
Dates: announcement_date, reading_date, discussion_date
Assets: cover_image_url, qr_target_url

Full schema: references/book-profile-schema.md

Slack Message Guidelines

Tone: Enthusiastic but not cheesy. Smart-casual. The friend who always has great book recommendations
Structure: Hook -> Body -> CTA. Every message ends with a clear call to action
Format: Slack mrkdwn (*bold*, _italic_, :emoji:, > quotes)
Length: Announcements ~150-250 words, reminders ~80-120 words
Emoji: 2-4 relevant emojis per message. Prefer: :books: :book: :brain: :bulb: :calendar:
Links: Format as <url|Display Text>, group in a links section

Full style guide: references/slack-style-guide.md All templates: references/slack-templates.md

Document Generation

Discussion guides, introductions, and one-pagers are generated as Markdown by default. Use the --pdf flag to also produce PDF output via the pdf skill from kjgarza-product.

For QR codes on one-pagers, use the Python qrcode library. See references/qr-code-generation.md.

All document templates: references/document-templates.md

Web Scraping

When the user provides a book URL or DOM snapshot:

Use WebFetch to retrieve the page (or parse provided DOM directly)
Look for JSON-LD structured data and schema.org Book markup first
Fall back to site-specific CSS selectors (Goodreads, Amazon, etc.)
Fall back to meta tags (Open Graph, Dublin Core)
Supplement any missing fields with WebSearch

Scraping patterns: references/scraping-patterns.md

Copyright

Never reproduce publisher synopses or blurbs verbatim — always paraphrase
Attribute ratings and awards to their source
When citing articles, include title, source, and URL