pdf

name	pdf
description	Use when extracting, creating, merging, splitting, or analyzing PDFs, or when filling PDF forms programmatically.
allowed-tools	["shell","read_file","write_file"]
metadata	{"short-description":"PDF processing and form handling"}

PDF Processing Guide

Preflight

• Prefer Python libraries if available (pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab).
• If libraries are missing, fall back to CLI tools (pdftotext, qpdf, pdftk).
• For forms, read forms.md first.

Overview

This guide covers essential PDF operations. This skill includes reference.md and forms.md in the same directory for advanced features and form handling.

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)

pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

import pdfplumber

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

reportlab - Create PDFs

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

c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
width, height = letter
c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!")
c.save()

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext

pdftotext input.pdf output.txt
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

qpdf

qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1

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()
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas or Platypus
Command line merge	qpdf	qpdf --empty --pages ...
Fill PDF forms	pypdf / pdf-lib	See forms.md

Next Steps

• For advanced usage, see reference.md
• For forms, follow forms.md

Arguments

Target: ${ARGUMENTS}