Book notes

Condense a book into its main concepts, examples, applications, and takeaways.

Create a structured summary of the supplied book text or notes. Cover its major topics and explain each important concept through four elements: overview, a source example, an application described in the text, and the key takeaway.

Use topic headings and brief subsections. Aim for about 800 words for a full book, or the user's requested length. Use fewer words for a chapter or excerpt. Combine repeated ideas and keep examples only when they clarify a concept.

Preserve the author's distinctions, limitations, and disagreements. Do not invent quotations, anecdotes, applications, or claims. If an element is absent from the supplied material, omit it or mark it as unspecified. State the scope when the available material does not cover the whole book.

Example

Notes from one chapter about limiting work in progress

Before 99 words

These notes cover only the chapter on limiting work in progress, not the whole book. The chapter distinguishes starting work from finishing it: opening more tasks can make a team look busy while delaying completed results. Its example follows a repair team with three unfinished jobs. The team stops accepting another routine job until it completes one of the three. The chapter applies this idea through a shared limit on active work, while allowing urgent safety repairs to bypass that limit. Its takeaway is to improve the flow of finished work rather than maximize the number of tasks started.

After 59 words

Scope: Chapter on limiting work in progress. ## Finish work before adding more Overview: Starting more tasks can delay completed results. Example: A repair team finishes one of three open jobs before accepting another routine job. Application: Set a shared active-work limit; allow urgent safety repairs to bypass it. Takeaway: Improve finished-work flow, not the count of tasks started.

Examples illustrate the method. They do not measure model output.

Files and sources

prompt.txt Complete prompt as plain text.
SKILL.md The same prompt with a skill header.
llms.txt (JSON) Prompt, metadata, example, and sources.
LICENSE CC0-1.0 license text.

Adapted from f/prompts.chat · Book Summarizer. Source notes.