pdf

name	pdf
description	Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading or extracting text/tables/formulas from PDFs (including scanned and photographed documents), OCR, combining or merging multiple PDFs, splitting, rotating, watermarking, creating new PDFs, encrypting/decrypting, and extracting images. Routes between pypdf (fast born-digital text), pdfplumber (tables), opendataloader-pdf (born-digital complex layout with optional Docling hybrid), and LightOnOCR-2-1B (vision-LM OCR for scanned/photographed docs; dolphin v2 fallback). If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill.
license	MIT (repository license)

PDF Skill — Unified Extraction and Manipulation

One auto-triggered entry point for all PDF work. The skill probes the PDF first, then routes to the cheapest sufficient backend. GPU OCR (LightOnOCR-2-1B, ~3 GB VRAM) is reserved for scans; dolphin v2 remains as fallback.

Step 1 — Probe first (ALWAYS)

Run this before any other PDF action:

python ~/.claude/skills/pdf/scripts/probe_pdf.py <input.pdf>

The probe returns JSON with:

• classification: one of encrypted, scanned, born_digital_footnotes, born_digital_simple, born_digital_formulas, born_digital_tables, born_digital_complex, uncertain, error
• formula_density: fraction of sampled pages carrying a math signal (math fonts such as CMMI/CMSY/CMEX, or math glyphs). Above 0.2 the PDF is classified born_digital_formulas and must be routed to a LaTeX-capable backend.
• footnote_density: fraction of sampled pages that look footnote-bearing. At/above 0.5 the PDF is classified born_digital_footnotes and routed to Docling-direct, which reconstructs footnotes (and emits formula LaTeX) — opendataloader-pdf discards footnote structure.
• recommended_backend: one of halt_password_required, lightonocr, docling, pypdf, pdfplumber, opendataloader_hybrid, opendataloader_then_lightonocr, fallback (docling drives scripts/docling_extract.py, the footnote-and-formula-aware path; lightonocr drives scripts/lightonocr_run.py)
• reasoning: one-sentence rationale
• warnings: list of strings; non-empty when a density-measurement helper (pdfplumber image/table probes) failed. When present, the classifier will not return born_digital_simple even if other signals look clean.

Cost: ~1 second, no GPU. Use the result to pick the next step.

Step 2 — Route by task

A. The user wants to READ / EXTRACT content from a PDF

Read extraction.md. Follow its decision tree based on the probe's classification:

Classification	Backend
encrypted	Halt; ask the user for a password; re-probe.
scanned	scripts/lightonocr_run.py (GPU, ~3 GB VRAM, ~1–2 s/page, LaTeX-aware). Fallback: dolphin (7.5 GB VRAM, ~10 s/page).
born_digital_footnotes	scripts/docling_extract.py — footnote-aware (inlines each footnote at its reference point as a pandoc inline footnote ^[…], and routes any note whose marker cannot be located to an ## Endnotes section so nothing is dropped) and formula-aware (LaTeX). The right path for academic papers (math or not). Then run sanitize_math.py. See extraction.md §"Footnotes + academic papers → Docling".
born_digital_simple	pypdf.extract_text() (instant).
born_digital_formulas	opendataloader-pdf --hybrid docling-fast with --enrich-formula (emits equations as LaTeX), OR docling_extract.py if footnotes also matter. Escalate to lightonocr if equations are images. See extraction.md §"Math-heavy → LaTeX".
born_digital_tables	pdfplumber.extract_tables().
born_digital_complex	opendataloader-pdf --hybrid docling-fast.
uncertain	opendataloader-pdf first; escalate to lightonocr if output is empty or has high (cid:N) ratio.

User override hints take precedence over the probe:

• "OCR this" / "scanned" → force lightonocr; "use dolphin" → force dolphin (legacy backend, still installed)
• "tables only" / "extract rows" → force pdfplumber + opendataloader
• "formulas" / "equations" / "math" / "keep the LaTeX" → born_digital_formulas path: opendataloader --enrich-formula (always add --restart-backend so the flag actually applies), or lightonocr if scanned. Do NOT use pypdf/pdfplumber — they drop equations.
• "footnotes" / "keep the footnotes" / "academic paper" / "law review" / "journal article" → scripts/docling_extract.py (footnote + formula aware). Do NOT use opendataloader/pypdf — they jumble or drop footnotes.
• "fast" / "quick text" → force pypdf
• "light mode" / "no hand repair" / "just the raw extraction" → run the probe-selected backend plus the deterministic post-processors (clean_garbled_fragments.py, sanitize_math.py), then run verify_extraction.py report-only (see Verification) and stop. Do NOT run the §4C render-and-rewrite repair loop.

B. The user wants to MANIPULATE a PDF

(merge / split / rotate / watermark / encrypt / extract images / create new)

Read manipulation.md. Uses pypdf, qpdf, pdfimages, reportlab.

C. The user wants to FILL a PDF FORM

Form filling is not included in this distribution. Anthropic's own document-skills pdf plugin ships a form-filling toolchain; install and use that instead.

D. The user needs JavaScript libs, pypdfium2, or performance optimization

Not covered in this distribution. Anthropic's document-skills pdf plugin carries the detailed pypdf/pypdfium2/JavaScript reference; consult that, or the libraries' own documentation.

E. The user wants ANNOTATIONS (reviewer comments, highlights, sticky notes)

Skip the content-extraction backends entirely — comments live in the PDF annotation layer, which none of them read. Run:

python ~/.claude/skills/pdf/scripts/extract_annotations.py <input.pdf> [output.md]

Emits one Markdown entry per annotation: page, type, author, comment text, the marked (highlighted) span, and the full surrounding paragraph as context. Link/Popup/Widget annotations are filtered out (hyperref PDFs otherwise yield hundreds of junk entries). The marked-span text is noisy by nature (overlapping quadpoints); quote from the clean Context field.

Quick reference

Task	Backend	When
Quick text dump	pypdf	Born-digital, no tables
Tables	pdfplumber	Born-digital, table-heavy
Markdown with structure	opendataloader-pdf hybrid	Complex born-digital layouts
Scanned / photographed	scripts/lightonocr_run.py	GPU, ~3 GB VRAM, LaTeX-aware
OCR fallback (GPU)	dolphin	LightOnOCR unavailable, or element/layout modes needed
Merge / split / rotate	pypdf or qpdf	Manipulation
Reviewer comments / highlights	scripts/extract_annotations.py (PyMuPDF)	Annotated manuscripts
Create from scratch	reportlab	Generation
OCR fallback (no GPU available)	pytesseract + pdf2image	When dolphin unavailable

Verification (run after every extraction)

Run the executable gate first — it catches the silent failures the manual checks below rely on you noticing:

python ~/.claude/skills/pdf/scripts/verify_extraction.py <out.md> --probe <probe.json>

It flags, with line numbers, the three failure modes that look plausible but are wrong on born-digital academic papers (finance/econ articles especially): Docling merging dense table rows into one cell, the formula model flattening or garbling equations (including \intertext debris from multi-line/cases equations), and stray private-use glyphs. Exit 1 = issues to fix before shipping. The repair for a flagged table or equation is the same: render that page region (render_region.py), read it, and rewrite the block from the image (extraction.md §4C), then re-run the gate until clean. A clean report plus the checks below = done.

Light mode (user said "light mode" / "no hand repair"): still run the gate — it is a ~1 s deterministic script — but treat it as report-only. Surface the flagged line numbers to the user as known defects and ship the output as-is; do not enter the render-and-rewrite loop. The user can then ask for repair of just the blocks they care about.

• Output length sane (proportional to page count).

• No high (cid:N) ratio in the result.

• Tables (if any) preserved as structure, not flattened text.

• Special characters (Greek, math symbols) extracted, not replaced with ?.

• For born_digital_formulas: the output actually contains LaTeX ($$…$$, \frac, \sum, \alpha, …). If formula_density was high but no LaTeX appears, the --enrich-formula flag did not apply — re-run the converter with --restart-backend, or escalate to lightonocr.

• For lightonocr and dolphin: confirm VRAM released: X MB remaining line in the run output. If missing, find the orphaned OCR process and kill ONLY that PID — never blanket-kill python (other GPU jobs and pipelines may be running):

  PowerShell variant (Windows native):

  nvidia-smi --query-compute-apps=pid,process_name --format=csv,noheader
  Get-CimInstance Win32_Process -Filter "ProcessId = <pid>" | Select-Object CommandLine  # confirm it's the OCR worker
  Stop-Process -Id <pid> -Force
  nvidia-smi --query-gpu=memory.used,memory.free --format=csv
  

  Bash variant (Git Bash / WSL / Linux):

  nvidia-smi --query-compute-apps=pid,name --format=csv,noheader
  ps -p <pid> -o args=   # confirm it's the OCR worker, not another GPU job
  kill -9 <pid>
  nvidia-smi --query-gpu=memory.used,memory.free --format=csv
  

Scripts directory

All scripts live in scripts/:

• probe_pdf.py — classifier (run first)
• render_region.py — render a page or --bbox region to PNG so a gate-flagged table or equation can be read back and rewritten by hand. The general repair for any mangled table (numeric grid, multi-panel, or prose+math definitions) and any broken equation — one approach, no per-table tuning. Auto-suggested by the gate; see extraction.md §4C
• verify_extraction.py — post-extraction quality gate (run last). Flags merged/spilled table rows, broken/flattened equations (\intertext debris, empty $$, display math left as plain text), and stray private-use glyphs, each with a line number and a fix pointer. --probe probe.json enables the formula-density-aware equation check. Exit 1 = issues. See extraction.md §8
• opendataloader_convert.py — wrapper with tqdm progress bar + probe integration. Post-processes the Markdown: strips garbled figure text (--no-clean-fragments) and makes math KaTeX-safe (--no-sanitize-math)
• clean_garbled_fragments.py — removes leaked vector-figure label fragments from extracted Markdown, and strips whole lines that are only private-use glyphs (e.g. a leaked cases-environment brace stranded above a $$ block), protecting LaTeX/tables/prose (run standalone on any .md)
• sanitize_math.py — wraps leaked equation alignment in \begin{aligned} and suppresses blocks the KaTeX engine can't render, so no parse-error string reaches a renderer (run standalone on any .md)
• katex_validate.js — Node helper that batch-validates LaTeX with the real KaTeX engine (oracle behind sanitize_math.py)
• vendor/katex.min.js — single-file KaTeX bundle vendored with the skill so math validation works across machines (with Node) without an npm install or a node_modules directory in a synced config folder
• docling_extract.py — Docling-direct extraction for academic papers: inlines each footnote at its reference point as a pandoc inline footnote (text^[note body]), routes notes whose marker cannot be located to an ## Endnotes section (preserved through pandoc), and emits formula LaTeX. Used for born_digital_footnotes; run sanitize_math.py on its output

Related skills

• markdown-to-pdf — converting a Markdown (.md) file INTO a PDF (pandoc → HTML + print CSS → headless Chrome, images preserved and scaled). Route "save this markdown as a PDF" requests there, not through reportlab.
• latex-from-mixed-sources — patterns for combining extracted PDF text with LLM-generated text into a .tex document. Read this AFTER extracting text if you're building a LaTeX manuscript.
• manuscript-editing-template-latex — docx ↔ LaTeX round-tripping pipeline.