ocr

name	ocr
description	Processes documents through case.dev OCR for text and table extraction. Supports PDF and image files up to 500MB with page-level and word-level output. Use when the user mentions "OCR", "text extraction", "scan document", "digitize", "extract text from PDF", or needs word-level positional data from documents.

case.dev OCR

Production-grade document OCR with table extraction and word-level positional data. Processes PDFs and images (PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, WEBP) up to 500MB.

Requires the casedev CLI. See setup skill for installation and auth.

Process a Document

Submit a document URL for OCR:

casedev ocr process --document-url "https://example.com/contract.pdf" --json

Flags:

• --document-url / --url (required) — publicly accessible URL or presigned vault URL
• --document-id — optional identifier to tag the job
• --engine — OCR engine override

Returns a job ID and initial status.

Check Job Status

casedev ocr status JOB_ID --json

Returns: ID, status, page count, created/completed timestamps.

Statuses: queued -> processing -> completed or failed.

Watch Until Complete

casedev ocr watch JOB_ID --json

Polls until the job finishes. Flags:

• --interval / -i — poll interval in seconds (default: 3)
• --timeout / -t — max wait in seconds (default: 900)

Word-Level Data

Retrieve word-level OCR output for a vault object:

casedev ocr words --vault VAULT_ID --object OBJECT_ID --json

This requires the document to be in a vault and have completed OCR ingestion. The object must be a PDF or image (audio/video files are rejected).

Flags:

• --page — specific page number
• --word-start — starting word index
• --word-end — ending word index

Returns per-page word arrays with text, word index, and confidence scores.

Uses focused vault if set via casedev focus set --vault.

Common Workflow

OCR a document from a vault

# 1. Upload to vault (triggers automatic ingestion + OCR)
casedev vault object upload ./scanned-contract.pdf --vault VAULT_ID --json

# 2. Check ingestion status
casedev vault object list --vault VAULT_ID --json

# 3. Get word-level data
casedev ocr words --vault VAULT_ID --object OBJECT_ID --json

# 4. Get specific page range
casedev ocr words --vault VAULT_ID --object OBJECT_ID --page 3 --json

OCR an external document

# 1. Submit
casedev ocr process --document-url "https://storage.example.com/doc.pdf" --json

# 2. Watch
casedev ocr watch JOB_ID --json

Troubleshooting

"Invalid file type for OCR": OCR only supports PDFs and images (application/pdf, image/*). Check the object's content type with casedev vault object list.

"Invalid object ID for this vault": Run casedev vault object list --vault VAULT_ID to see valid object IDs.

Job stuck in "processing": Increase watch timeout with --timeout 1800. Large documents (100+ pages) take longer.

"OCR job failed": The document may be corrupted or in an unsupported format. Re-upload and retry.