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.