gutenberg

Search, download, and clean public-domain ebooks from Project Gutenberg via the Gutendex API.

40|6|Updated Jul 11, 2026
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills --skill gutenberg
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: gutenberg
Source: https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/main/gutenberg
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills --skill gutenberg

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill includes scripts (resource) and references (resource) components.

What problem does it solve?

This skill eliminates the friction of finding, downloading, and cleaning classic literature by providing a unified, automated pipeline for accessing the entire Project Gutenberg library.

Core Features & Use Cases

  • Automated Retrieval: Search the Gutenberg catalog by title or author and download books in plain text or EPUB format.
  • Content Cleaning: Automatically strip licensing boilerplate and extract clean text from complex EPUB files.
  • Classification: Automatically categorize books as fiction or non-fiction based on subject metadata.
  • Use Case: Use this skill to quickly fetch and clean the full text of a classic novel for literary analysis or to build a personal corpus of public-domain research materials.

Quick Start

Use the gutenberg skill to search for Moby Dick and download the clean text version to your local directory.

Frequently Asked Questions about gutenberg

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I download public-domain ebooks from Project Gutenberg in plain text?

Automatically strip licensing boilerplate and extract clean text from complex EPUB files during download. The pipeline handles format conversion and boilerplate removal to produce ready-to-use plain text for analysis.

Can I categorize downloaded Gutenberg books as fiction or non-fiction?

Run the skill with Python 3.8+ using only standard library modules for network requests and file parsing. It requires no external dependencies, making it straightforward to execute in a standard Python environment.

What is the best way to build a corpus of classic literature for text-mining?

Build a text-mining corpus by searching the Gutenberg catalog by title or author, downloading books in plain text, and removing boilerplate automatically. This creates a clean dataset of public-domain literature for analysis.

Does the Gutenberg text extraction pipeline require any external Python libraries?

No external Python libraries are required. The text extraction pipeline relies exclusively on Python 3.8+ standard library modules to perform network requests and parse files without additional dependencies.