pdf

name	pdf
description	Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading or extracting text/tables from PDFs, combining or merging multiple PDFs into one, splitting PDFs apart, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs, filling PDF forms, encrypting/decrypting PDFs, extracting images, and OCR on scanned PDFs to make them searchable. If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill.
license	Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms

PDF Processing Guide

Overview

This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see REFERENCE.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read FORMS.md and follow its instructions.

Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Read a PDF
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
print(f"Pages: {len(reader.pages)}")

# Extract text
text = ""
for page in reader.pages:
    text += page.extract_text()

Python Libraries

pypdf - Basic Operations

Merge PDFs

from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader

writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf", "doc3.pdf"]:
    reader = PdfReader(pdf_file)
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)

with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Split PDF

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    writer = PdfWriter()
    writer.add_page(page)
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as output:
        writer.write(output)

Extract Metadata

reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
meta = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
print(f"Subject: {meta.subject}")
print(f"Creator: {meta.creator}")

Rotate Pages

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90)  # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
writer.add_page(page)

with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

Extract Text with Layout

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        print(text)

Extract Tables

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages):
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for j, table in enumerate(tables):
            print(f"Table {j+1} on page {i+1}:")
            for row in table:
                print(row)

Advanced Table Extraction

import pandas as pd

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    all_tables = []
    for page in pdf.pages:
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for table in tables:
            if table:  # Check if table is not empty
                df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
                all_tables.append(df)

# Combine all tables
if all_tables:
    combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
    combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)

reportlab - Create PDFs

Basic PDF Creation

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
width, height = letter

# Add text
c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!")
c.drawString(100, height - 120, "This is a PDF created with reportlab")

# Add a line
c.line(100, height - 140, 400, height - 140)

# Save
c.save()

Create PDF with Multiple Pages

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []

# Add content
title = Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title'])
story.append(title)
story.append(Spacer(1, 12))

body = Paragraph("This is the body of the report. " * 20, styles['Normal'])
story.append(body)
story.append(PageBreak())

# Page 2
story.append(Paragraph("Page 2", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Paragraph("Content for page 2", styles['Normal']))

# Build PDF
doc.build(story)

Subscripts and Superscripts

IMPORTANT: Never use Unicode subscript/superscript characters (₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉, ⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹) in ReportLab PDFs. The built-in fonts do not include these glyphs, causing them to render as solid black boxes.

Instead, use ReportLab's XML markup tags in Paragraph objects:

from reportlab.platypus import Paragraph
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

styles = getSampleStyleSheet()

# Subscripts: use <sub> tag
chemical = Paragraph("H<sub>2</sub>O", styles['Normal'])

# Superscripts: use <super> tag
squared = Paragraph("x<super>2</super> + y<super>2</super>", styles['Normal'])

For canvas-drawn text (not Paragraph objects), manually adjust font the size and position rather than using Unicode subscripts/superscripts.

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

# Extract text
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

# Extract text preserving layout
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

# Extract specific pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt  # Pages 1-5

qpdf

# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

# Split pages
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf

# Rotate pages
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1  # Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees

# Remove password
qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf

pdftk (if available)

# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

# Split
pdftk input.pdf burst

# Rotate
pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf

Common Tasks

Extract Text from Scanned PDFs

# Requires: pip install pytesseract pdf2image
import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

# Convert PDF to images
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')

# OCR each page
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
    text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
    text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
    text += "\n\n"

print(text)

Add Watermark

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Create watermark (or load existing)
watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]

# Apply to all pages
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark)
    writer.add_page(page)

with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Extract Images

# Using pdfimages (poppler-utils)
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix

# This extracts all images as output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc.

Password Protection

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)

# Add password
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")

with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Quick Reference

Task	Best Tool	Command/Code
Merge PDFs	pypdf	writer.add_page(page)
Split PDFs	pypdf	One page per file
Extract text	pdfplumber	page.extract_text()
Extract tables	pdfplumber	page.extract_tables()
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas or Platypus
Command line merge	qpdf	qpdf --empty --pages ...
OCR scanned PDFs	pytesseract	Convert to image first
Fill PDF forms	pdf-lib or pypdf (see FORMS.md)	See FORMS.md

Next Steps

• For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see REFERENCE.md
• For JavaScript libraries (pdf-lib), see REFERENCE.md
• If you need to fill out a PDF form, follow the instructions in FORMS.md
• For troubleshooting guides, see REFERENCE.md

---

name: pdf description: Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading/extracting text and tables from PDFs, splitting/merging/rotating pages, adding simple watermarks, creating PDFs, extracting images, encrypting/decrypting, filling basic form fields, and OCR on scanned PDFs to make them searchable. If the user mentions a .pdf file (or asks to produce one), use this skill.

PDF Skill

What to do first (choose the workflow)

1. If the request is about extraction (summary, search, “what’s in this PDF”, pull tables): use Text/Table Extraction.
2. If the request is about editing the PDF structure (split/merge/rotate, watermark, images): use PDF Edits.
3. If extracted text is empty or the PDF is scanned: use OCR for Scanned PDFs.

Text extraction (born-digital PDFs)

Use pdfplumber for best results (better layout than plain pypdf):

import pdfplumber

path = "input.pdf"
out = []
with pdfplumber.open(path) as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages, start=1):
        text = page.extract_text() or ""
        out.append((i, text))

for i, text in out:
    print(f"--- Page {i} ---")
    print(text)

If extract_text() returns mostly empty, treat it as scanned and switch to OCR.

Table extraction

import pdfplumber

path = "input.pdf"
with pdfplumber.open(path) as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages, start=1):
        tables = page.extract_tables() or []
        if not tables:
            continue
        print(f"--- Page {i} Tables: {len(tables)} ---")
        for t_idx, table in enumerate(tables, start=1):
            print(f"Table {t_idx}:")
            for row in table:
                print(row)

When returning to the user, prefer a structured output:

• For each table: include page and a best-effort CSV/TSV block.
• If rows/columns are ambiguous: return a not_strictly_structured note and the raw rows.

PDF edits (split / merge / rotate / watermark)

Merge:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

writer = PdfWriter()
for p in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf"]:
    reader = PdfReader(p)
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
writer.write(open("merged.pdf", "wb"))

Split into single pages:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i in range(len(reader.pages)):
    w = PdfWriter()
    w.add_page(reader.pages[i])
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as f:
        w.write(f)

Rotate:

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    page.rotate(90)
    writer.add_page(page)
with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

Watermark (simple overlay):

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark)
    writer.add_page(page)
with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

OCR for scanned PDFs (make text searchable)

When pdfplumber text is empty/garbled:

1. Convert PDF pages to images (requires Poppler pdftoppm).
2. OCR each image with Tesseract.

# pip install pytesseract pdf2image
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
import pytesseract

pages = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")
chunks = []
for i, img in enumerate(pages, start=1):
    text = pytesseract.image_to_string(img)
    chunks.append((i, text))
    print(f"--- Page {i} ---")
    print(text)

If accuracy is low:

• Ask for language (eng, chi_sim, etc.) or detect it from context.
• Increase preprocessing (grayscale/threshold) if needed (briefly mention what you changed).

Extract images

If pdfimages (Poppler utils) is available:

pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix

Return a list of extracted image filenames and (optionally) OCR them if requested.

Encrypt / decrypt / password handling

Prefer qpdf when available:

# decrypt (remove password)
qpdf --password=USERPWD --decrypt input.pdf -- output.pdf

If the user only has one password, use it as --password=... and explain any limitations.

QA (required for extraction tasks)

Before final output:

1. Verify coverage: confirm which pages were processed (all vs subset).
2. Detect failures: if OCR was used, note it; if tables were found, report count per page.
3. Provide page anchors in your answer (e.g., “Page 4”) so the user can audit results.