SlipBot Kindle Importer

Import reading notes from Kindle HTML exports into the slipbox. Use when user sends a Kindle notebook export file (HTML/XHTML). Parses book title and author, extracts only user's Notes (skips Highlights), then runs slipbot for each.

Kindle Import

Parse Kindle notebook exports (HTML) and create slipbox entries for user's notes.

Input Format

Kindle exports are XHTML files with this structure:

html

<div class="bookTitle">Book Title Here</div>
<div class="authors">Author Name</div>
...
<div class="sectionHeading">Chapter/Section Name</div>
<div class="noteHeading">Highlight (yellow) - Section > Page X</div>
<div class="noteText">Highlighted text from book</div>
<div class="noteHeading">Note - Section > Page X</div>
<div class="noteText">User's own note</div>

Key distinction:

• noteHeading starting with "Highlight" → book text → Skip
• noteHeading starting with "Note" → user's own thoughts → Import

Parsing Rules

Metadata Extraction

1. Book title: content of .bookTitle div
2. Author: content of .authors div
3. Source type: book

Content Extraction

1. Find all .noteHeading elements
2. If heading starts with "Note" → get the following .noteText content → import
3. If heading starts with "Highlight" → skip
4. Section info (e.g., "Client-side/Stateless Sessions > Page 28") can be ignored

Workflow

1. Parse file → extract book title and author
2. Extract user notes → collect only Note entries (not Highlights)
3. Precheck → show user: book title, author, note count, ask for confirmation
4. On confirmation → for each note, invoke slipbot:
   • Type: note (- prefix)
   • Source: ~ book, {title} by {author}
   • Let slipbot handle: filename, tags, links, graph update
5. Report → count of notes created

Example

Input file metadata:

• Title: "The JWT Handbook"
• Author: "Sebastian E Peyrott"

Parsed entries:

text

Highlight (yellow) - Page 28: "This is easily solved by..." → SKIP
Note - Page 28: "Applications should not allow unsigned JWTs..." → IMPORT

Slipbot call:

text

- Applications should not allow unsigned JWTs to be considered valid. ~ book, The JWT Handbook by Sebastian E Peyrott

Edge Cases

• No user notes (only Highlights): Report "no notes to import"
• Multiple authors: Preserve as-is from the file
• Missing author: Use "Unknown" as author
• Special characters in title/content: Preserve as-is
• HTML entities: Decode before storing (& → &, etc.)

Supported File Types

• .html files exported from Kindle app
• XHTML files (same structure)
• Files sent via Telegram (application/xml or text/plain mime types)