Reading Time Estimator

Overview

You pass text (or a file_ref); we count its words and divide by a reading speed you control, then hand back the duration in seconds and minutes, a slower/faster band around it, and the arithmetic we used. Rounding and a minimum duration are yours to set. Treat the number as an estimate — real readers vary, and we never pretend otherwise.

Reading time is a simple formula, but LLMs often get it wrong or hide their WPM assumption. We make the assumption explicit and return an uncertainty band.

When to use it

Scope

Non-goals

• Does not adjust for content complexity or reader expertise
• Does not account for technical jargon density or rich formatting
• Does not predict comprehension time — only raw reading duration

Properties

Capabilities

Cost & billing

Flat rate per invocation

File handling

File limits

Constraints this skill applies to your input and generated files. The “Limited by” column shows the static source of each cap; none of these can be raised by upgrading your plan.

How we handle your data

Input schema

Output schema

API contract

curl -sS -X POST "$BASE/v1/execute" -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"skillKey":"text.estimate_reading_time","input":{"text":"Your article text here.","words_per_minute":238}}'

import { Squillify } from "@squillify/sdk";

const sq = new Squillify({ apiKey: process.env.SQUILLIFY_API_KEY });

const { output } = await sq.execute("text.estimate_reading_time", {"words_per_minute":238,"text":"Machine learning models require large amounts of labeled data for training. Transfer learning reduces this requirement by leveraging pre-trained representations from related tasks, significantly lowering the data and compute needed to achieve competitive performance."});

Errors

Other limits

Limitations

• Does not adjust for content complexity or reader expertise
• Does not account for technical jargon density or rich formatting
• Does not predict comprehension time — only raw reading duration
• Precise timing for highly technical or specialized audiences
• Non-text content timing (slides, video, audio)
• Speaking or presentation duration (use text.estimate_speaking_time)

How to call

POST /v1/execute (requires authentication)

{
  "skillKey": "text.estimate_reading_time",
  "input": {
    "words_per_minute": 238,
    "text": "Machine learning models require large amounts of labeled data for training. Transfer learning reduces this requirement by leveraging pre-trained representations from related tasks, significantly lowering the data and compute needed to achieve competitive performance."
  }
}

Examples

{
  "words_per_minute": 238,
  "text": "Machine learning models require large amounts of labeled data for training. Transfer learning reduces this requirement by leveraging pre-trained representations from related tasks, significantly lowering the data and compute needed to achieve competitive performance."
}

{
  "warnings": [
    "Reading time is an estimate based on assumed words per minute."
  ],
  "unit": "seconds",
  "policy": "words_per_minute",
  "details": {
    "word_policy": "orthographic",
    "rounding": "nearest_second",
    "word_count": 34,
    "raw_seconds": 8.571428571428571,
    "words_per_minute": 238
  },
  "range_seconds": {
    "high": 11,
    "low": 7
  },
  "locale": "und",
  "skill": "text.estimate_reading_time",
  "duration_minutes": 0.15,
  "duration_seconds": 9
}

{
  "text": "Hello world",
  "return_details": true,
  "words_per_minute": 200
}

{
  "warnings": [
    "Reading time is an estimate based on assumed words per minute."
  ],
  "unit": "seconds",
  "policy": "words_per_minute",
  "details": {
    "word_policy": "orthographic",
    "rounding": "nearest_second",
    "word_count": 2,
    "raw_seconds": 0.6,
    "words_per_minute": 200
  },
  "range_seconds": {
    "high": 1,
    "low": 1
  },
  "locale": "und",
  "skill": "text.estimate_reading_time",
  "duration_minutes": 0.02,
  "duration_seconds": 1
}

Recommended use cases

• Generate time-to-read badges for articles or documentation
• Plan content length for newsletters or blog posts
• Check whether copy fits editorial length guidelines

Avoid for

• Precise timing for highly technical or specialized audiences
• Non-text content timing (slides, video, audio)
• Speaking or presentation duration (use text.estimate_speaking_time)

Related skills

Composable with

Safety & privacy

• Runs without calling any external service.
• Your payloads are never stored permanently.
• Telemetry captures metadata only — never your payload contents.
• We never train models on your payloads.
• No human reviews your payloads.

Tags