Book Study — Reading Coach

Guide users through books systematically using active recall, mastery learning, and spaced repetition.

Mastery Scale (4-Criterion Rubric)

Mastery Threshold: >= 3/4 per question AND >= 80% overall for the chapter.

Usage

/book-study <book-name>                    # Start a new book or resume progress
/book-study <book-name> --chapter 3        # Jump to chapter 3
/book-study ingest                         # Compile current chapter to wiki
/book-study query <keyword>               # Query the knowledge base
/book-study review                         # Spaced repetition review
/book-study compare <book-A> <book-B>     # Cross-book comparison
/book-study questions                      # View open questions
/book-study status                         # View all reading progress

Data Structure

Wiki defaults to book-wiki/ under the current project root.

book-wiki/
├── index.md                    # Global index: all books + cross-book concepts
├── log.md                      # Append-only operation log
├── <book-slug>/                # One directory per book
│   ├── meta.md                 # Book metadata (title, author, reading status)
│   ├── study-plan.md           # Reading plan + progress tracking
│   ├── mastery-map.md          # Mastery status map
│   ├── chapters/               # Chapter summaries
│   ├── concepts/               # Core concepts from the book
│   ├── cases/                  # Cases, stories, experiments
│   ├── models/                 # Frameworks, models, methodologies
│   ├── quotes/                 # Notable quotes
│   └── questions/              # Questions raised during reading
└── cross-book/                 # Cross-book knowledge
    ├── concepts/               # Shared concepts across books
    └── comparisons/            # Cross-book comparisons

File naming: All lowercase, hyphen-separated. Book slug: book title in pinyin or English abbreviation (e.g. thinking-fast-and-slow).

Cross-references: [[concepts/xxx]] within a book, [[/cross-book/concepts/xxx]] across books. Obsidian-compatible.

Learning Flow

Phase 0: Open a Book

On first /book-study <book-name>:

1. Check if book-wiki/<book-slug>/ exists
   • Yes → read study-plan.md, restore progress (see "State Restoration")
   • No → initialize new book
2. New book initialization (interactive — ask one at a time):
   • What format do you have? (physical / ebook / PDF)
   • Why are you reading this book? What problem are you trying to solve?
   • How familiar are you with this domain? (beginner / some background / experienced)
   • Rough timeline to finish?
3. Generate meta.md:

# <Book Title>

- **Author**: XXX
- **Category**: Psychology / Economics / Tech / ...
- **Status**: In Progress
- **Started**: YYYY-MM-DD
- **Core Question**: What question does this book try to answer?
- **One-line Review**: (fill after finishing)

4. Generate study-plan.md:

# <Book Title> Study Plan

## Info

- **Title**: XXX
- **Author**: XXX
- **Total Chapters**: XX
- **Goal**: user's problem to solve
- **Timeline**: X weeks
- **Started**: YYYY-MM-DD

## Chapter Plan

| #   | Chapter      | Core Question             | Status      | Mastery | Date |
| --- | ------------ | ------------------------- | ----------- | ------- | ---- |
| 1   | Chapter Name | What this chapter answers | Not Started | -       | -    |

### Status Legend

- Not Started
- Guided (pre-reading done, ready to read)
- Reading
- Ingested (compiled, pending test)
- Mastered (test passed)
- Needs Review (test failed)

## Current Position

- **Current Chapter**: Chapter X
- **Next Action**: guide / read / ingest / test / review

5. Generate mastery-map.md:

# <Book Title> Mastery Map

## Concepts

| Concept                    | Chapter | Status | Last Tested | Next Review |
| -------------------------- | ------- | ------ | ----------- | ----------- |
| (auto-populated on ingest) |         |        |             |             |

## Models

| Model | Chapter | Status | Last Tested | Next Review |
| ----- | ------- | ------ | ----------- | ----------- |

## Stats

- Total knowledge points: X
- Mastered: X (X%)
- Due for review: X
- Untested: X

Phase 1: Pre-Reading Guide (before each chapter)

Purpose: activate prior knowledge, set reading questions.

1. Read study-plan.md, confirm current chapter
2. Design 2-3 pre-reading questions following these principles:
   • Connect to user's goal: Tie back to the problem they stated in Phase 0
   • Activate prior chapters: Reference concepts already mastered ("You learned [X] last chapter — how do you think that relates to this chapter's topic?")
   • Probe intuition: Ask what they expect the author to argue, so they read with a hypothesis to test
   • Keep it concrete: Not "What do you think about XX?" but "If you had to solve [specific scenario], what would you do right now?"
3. Present questions and send user off to read
4. Update study-plan.md status to "Guided"

If user is a complete beginner (diagnosed in Phase 0), do a brief Socratic warm-up on foundational concepts before sending them to read.

Phase 2: Read + Compile (Ingest)

When user comes back after reading a chapter:

1. Accept user input (notes, verbal summary, highlights, raw text)
2. Execute ingest (see "Knowledge Compilation" section below)
3. Update study-plan.md status to "Ingested"

Extended content

This repository enforces a short root SKILL.md. Continue with references/skill-body-continuation.md for the rest of the original skill body.