| name | pdf-processing |
| description | Extract text and tables from PDF files, fill PDF forms, merge and split documents. Use when the user mentions PDFs, forms, document extraction, or needs to combine multiple PDF files. |
| license | Apache-2.0 |
| metadata | {"author":"example-org","version":"1.0"} |
PDF Processing Skill
Overview
This skill enables working with PDF documents: extracting text, filling forms, merging files, and splitting pages.
When to Use
Activate this skill when the user:
- Asks to read, extract, or summarize content from a PDF
- Needs to fill in a PDF form programmatically
- Wants to merge multiple PDFs into one document
- Needs to split a PDF into individual pages
Step 1: Identify the Task
Determine which operation is needed:
| Task | Tool |
|---|
| Extract text | pdfplumber |
| Fill forms | pypdf |
| Merge files | pypdf |
| Split pages | pypdf |
Step 2: Install Dependencies
pip install pdfplumber pypdf
Step 3: Extract Text
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
text = page.extract_text()
print(text)
Step 4: Merge PDFs
from pypdf import PdfWriter
writer = PdfWriter()
for filename in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf"]:
writer.append(filename)
with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Edge Cases
- Password-protected PDFs require the password to be passed to the reader
- Scanned PDFs (image-based) require OCR — use
pytesseract with pdf2image
- Very large PDFs should be processed page-by-page to avoid memory issues
Notes
Always close file handles after processing. Use context managers (with statements) wherever possible.
