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Generate — Book

/generate book concatenates wiki pages into a book-format PDF: title page, auto-generated table of contents, chapter-per-page, preserved cross-references.

flowchart TB
    Start([/generate book topic]) --> Resolve
    Resolve["Resolve topic<br/>tag / folder / file / all"] --> Sort
    Sort["Sort pages<br/>lexicographically"] --> Hash
    Hash["Compute source-hash<br/>(shared helper)"] --> Bundle
    Bundle["Build markdown bundle<br/>strip frontmatter,<br/>resolve wikilinks,<br/>rewrite image paths"] --> Render
    Render["Pandoc → XeLaTeX<br/>(HTML fallback if no engine)"] --> Sidecar
    Sidecar[".meta.yaml<br/>sidecar"] --> Done([PDF ready])
    Render --> Pdf[("book.pdf")]


    classDef engine fill:#5bbcd6,stroke:#2e6c7c,color:#0b0f14
    classDef output fill:#7dcea0,stroke:#2d6a4f,color:#0b0f14
    class Resolve,Sort,Hash,Bundle,Render engine
    class Sidecar,Pdf output

Usage

Section titled “Usage”
/generate book <topic> [--vault <name>] [--no-toc] [--template <name>]

<topic> can be:

FormMeaningExample
TagAll pages with this tag in frontmatterattention
FolderAll .md in this wiki folderconcepts/rag
FileA single wiki pagewiki/concepts/attention.md
allEvery .md under wiki/ except index.md / log.mdall

Example

Section titled “Example”
Terminal window
/generate book transformers --vault llm-wiki-research

Output:

✅ Book generated
   Topic:       transformers
   Pages in:    8 (sorted)
   Source hash: 2dd9ed4a003f
   Output:      vaults/llm-wiki-research/artifacts/book/transformers-2026-04-17.pdf
   Sidecar:     vaults/llm-wiki-research/artifacts/book/transformers-2026-04-17.meta.yaml
   Open with:   open vaults/llm-wiki-research/artifacts/book/transformers-2026-04-17.pdf

The sidecar captures everything needed to re-generate deterministically:

generator: generate-book@0.1.0
generated-at: 2026-04-17T06:10:00Z
template: book-default
topic: "transformers"
flags:
  toc: true
generated-from:
  - vaults/llm-wiki-research/wiki/concepts/attention.md
  - vaults/llm-wiki-research/wiki/concepts/self-attention.md
  - vaults/llm-wiki-research/wiki/entities/transformer.md
source-hash: 2dd9ed4a003f9a778453f3b5a091b86a7580cf6a4befe648bf12f6535d958432

Dependencies

Section titled “Dependencies”

Lazy-installed on first run:

ToolInstallPurpose
pandocbrew install pandoc (macOS) / apt install pandocMarkdown → LaTeX / HTML
XeLaTeXbrew install --cask basictex (~100MB) / apt install texlive-xetexPDF engine

If no LaTeX engine is available, /generate book falls back to HTML output and tells you how to install one. The handler does not hard-fail on a missing engine.

Customisation

Section titled “Customisation”

Override the template

Section titled “Override the template”
Terminal window
# Start from Pandoc's default book template
pandoc -D latex > book.tex


# Save to the skill's templates folder
mv book.tex .claude/skills/generate-book/templates/book.tex


# Edit to taste — custom fonts, cover page, headers

The handler auto-detects the template file and passes it to Pandoc via --template.

Skip the TOC

Section titled “Skip the TOC”
Terminal window
/generate book all --no-toc

Flags that will land in later phases

Section titled “Flags that will land in later phases”
  • --include-mermaid — render mermaid code blocks to PNG via mermaid-cli (Phase 2B)
  • --hyperref — convert [[wikilink]] to clickable internal PDF anchors (Phase 2B)
  • --cover <image.png> — custom cover art (Phase 2B)

Known Limitations (Phase 2A)

Section titled “Known Limitations (Phase 2A)”
  • Mermaid diagrams render as fenced code blocks, not images. Readable, not pretty. Phase 2B fixes this.
  • Wikilinks render as italic inline text rather than clickable anchors.
  • Cross-vault references aren’t resolved — [[other-vault:page]] isn’t a thing yet.
Section titled “How Wikilinks Are Resolved”
Source:    See [[attention]] for the foundational idea.
Rendered:  See *attention* for the foundational idea.
Source:    As the [[transformer|original paper]] explains…
Rendered:  As the *original paper* explains…

A sed pass runs before Pandoc — it never sees the [[...]] syntax.

Pandoc Errors

Section titled “Pandoc Errors”

If Pandoc fails (missing LaTeX package, unicode glyph, etc.) the skill tails the last 20 lines of stderr and suggests the common fix:

pandoc failed. Last 20 lines of stderr:
  ! Undefined control sequence.
  l.142 \textbeta


Common fixes:
  - Missing LaTeX package:   tlmgr install <package>
  - Unicode error:           set PDF_ENGINE=xelatex
  - Image not found:         check relative paths in source pages
  - Font not found:          install font or drop -V mainfont=...

See Also

Section titled “See Also”