librarian

What This Skill Does

The Librarian skill is a sophisticated conversational research assistant designed to transform your personal book library into a searchable knowledge base. Built on a robust sandwich architecture, this tool bridges the gap between natural language requests and deterministic data retrieval. By utilizing semantic search across your library and topic indexes, the Librarian can locate precise concepts, arguments, or specific citations within your stored digital literature, providing you with synthesized answers rather than just a list of files.

Installation

To integrate this skill into your OpenClaw environment, ensure you have the core framework installed. Run the following command in your terminal:

clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/nonlinear/librarian

Once installed, you must initialize your library by running librarian index to generate the necessary .library-index.json and .topic-index.json files. The skill requires these metadata files to perform semantic lookups effectively. Always check that your library path is correctly configured in the environment settings to avoid 'ERROR_NO_METADATA' prompts.

Use Cases

• Academic Research: Quickly find specific arguments or citations across hundreds of PDFs without manual skimming.
• Synthesis: Ask for comparisons between different authors, such as 'How does Graeber contrast with Marx on the subject of value?'
• Deep Reading: Use it as a companion to digest dense material by asking for summaries of specific chapters or thematic mappings.
• Knowledge Management: Maintain a searchable repository of your professional and personal development reading list.

Example Prompts

1. "What does David Graeber say about the origin of debt in his book Debt: The First 5000 Years?"
2. "Find me the passage in the library that discusses the concept of flow state within the context of psychology."
3. "Summarize the main arguments presented in my library regarding remote work productivity and provide specific page citations."

Tips & Limitations

The Librarian skill adheres to a strict 'Hard Stop' protocol. This means the AI will prioritize an honest 'I don't know' over hallucinating information. If the confidence level of your query falls below 75%, the skill will ask for clarification rather than guessing the intent. For the best results, be specific about the book or topic when querying. Always ensure your library index is up-to-date; if you have added new files, run the index command again to ensure they are included in the search pool. The skill is designed for text-based semantic retrieval and is not intended for image-based file analysis.