Claude Code skill recovers 815 export-blocked Kindle highlights
A Claude Code skill that recovers export-blocked Kindle highlights
A new Claude Code skill extracts every highlight from a Kindle book into a single Markdown file, including the ones Amazon's export limit truncates or hides entirely. It combines scraped notebook data with the Mac Kindle app's exact annotation positions and OCR of Cloud Reader pages. Tested on four books, it recovered all 815 blocked highlights (454 truncated, 361 hidden) with high accuracy. The skill is macOS-only and requires specific setup, but the author provides a detailed guide.
Those are your own notes, in your own account, capped by a budget Amazon doesn't document and you can't raise.
- tetec1
I've done something similar myself with Kindle Cloud Reader a few months ago. For the purpose of language learning, I wanted to extract the surrounding context of every word I highlighted in books I read. Turns out it's impossible only with the device.
On Kindle Cloud Reader, Amazon serves images for the pages of the book, so you can't directly read the text. But you can indeed OCR the images and extract the context like that. I created a small browser extension with Claude.
It's crazy how difficult Amazon made this process for reasonable use cases like that.
- ironqcold
Cool plugin. I got annoyed myself when Kindle cut off long highlights. The fact that the author managed to pull them out using the Mac's local database and OCR is solid. And good on them for not using third-party services for recognition, but going with Apple Vision instead — fast and no extra hassle. Shame it's tied to macOS, but for Mac owners it's perfect. Anyway, useful thing for those who actually read a lot and take notes.
- smusamashah
Remotely related. I made this KOreader plugin around yesterday using Claude code to take notes (actually just scribbles) on my old Kindle Paperwhite 4 (2018, 10th gen) https://github.com/SMUsamaShah/fingerink.koplugin
I didn't know this was possible at all. I saw some plugins to take notes using Stylus and thought capacitative touch should work too.