pdf

name	pdf
description	Use for creating, editing, extracting, OCRing, filling, and converting PDF documents.
defaultProjectInstall	true
defaultProjectInstallOrder	40

PDF Processing

Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

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

text = "".join(page.extract_text() or "" for page in reader.pages)

Use this for fast inspection. Move to the tool-specific sections below when you need layout-aware extraction, OCR, forms, rendering, or creation.

When to Use Which Tool

Task	Tool	Details
Create PDF from scratch	ReportLab	libraries/reportlab.md
Read / merge / split / rotate / encrypt	pypdf	—
Extract text and tables	pdfplumber	libraries/pdfplumber.md
Render pages to images	pypdfium2	libraries/pypdfium2.md
Create/manipulate in JavaScript	pdf-lib	—
CLI merge/split/encrypt/optimize/repair	qpdf	libraries/cli-tools.md
CLI text extraction	pdftotext	libraries/cli-tools.md
CLI image extraction	pdfimages	libraries/cli-tools.md
CLI page rendering	pdftoppm	libraries/cli-tools.md
OCR scanned PDFs	pytesseract + pdf2image	Convert to images, then OCR
Fill PDF forms	pypdf or pdf-lib	form-filling.md
Convert PDF to Word	pdf2docx (load docx skill)	See docx skill — Converting PDF to Word

Form filling: You MUST read form-filling.md before attempting to fill any PDF form.

Design and Typography

Design defaults: See skills/design-foundations/SKILL.md for palette, fonts + PDF pairings, chart colors, and core principles (1 accent + neutrals, no decorative imagery, accessibility).

Typography: PDFs embed any TTF font — use distinctive, professional fonts, not system defaults. Download from Google Fonts at runtime, register with ReportLab, and it embeds automatically. See libraries/reportlab.md (Custom Fonts section) and skills/design-foundations/SKILL.md (PDF Pairings table + Font Strategy by Format). Default to a clean sans-serif (Inter, DM Sans, Work Sans).

CJK text: Fonts like Inter and DM Sans only cover Latin glyphs. ReportLab has no automatic font fallback — unregistered scripts render as tofu. Register Noto Sans CJK for Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text. See libraries/reportlab.md (CJK Font Support).

PDF Metadata

Always set metadata when creating PDFs:

• Author should default to "Kortix" unless the user asks for a different organization or author name
• Title should be a descriptive name relevant to the document contents

Canvas API: c.setTitle(...), c.setAuthor("Kortix") right after creating the canvas. SimpleDocTemplate: pass title=..., author="Kortix" as constructor kwargs. pdf-lib (JS): doc.setTitle(...), doc.setAuthor("Kortix").

Source Citations

Every PDF that includes information from web sources MUST have:

1. Numbered superscript footnote markers in body text (using <super> tags, never Unicode superscripts)
2. A numbered source list at the bottom of each page with clickable hyperlinked URLs

Each footnote entry must include the actual URL wrapped in an <a href> tag — never omit the URL or substitute a plain-text source name. See libraries/reportlab.md (Source Citations) for the implementation pattern.

Hyperlinks

All URLs in generated PDFs must be clickable. In ReportLab Paragraph objects, use <a href="..." color="blue"> markup. On the canvas, use canvas.linkURL(url, rect). See libraries/reportlab.md (Hyperlinks).

Subscripts and Superscripts

Never use Unicode subscript/superscript characters in ReportLab PDFs. Built-in fonts lack these glyphs, rendering them as black boxes. Use <sub> and <super> XML tags in Paragraph objects. For canvas text, manually adjust font size and y-offset. See libraries/reportlab.md (Subscripts and Superscripts).

Tips

Text extraction: pdftotext is the fastest option for plain text. Use pdfplumber when you need tables or coordinate data — don't use pypdf.extract_text() on large documents, it's slow.

Image extraction: pdfimages extracts embedded images directly and is much faster than rendering whole pages. Only render with pypdfium2 or pdftoppm when you need a visual snapshot of the page layout.

Large PDFs: Process pages individually or in chunks rather than loading the entire document. Use qpdf --split-pages to break up very large files before processing.

Encrypted PDFs: Use pypdf to detect and decrypt (reader.is_encrypted / reader.decrypt(pw)). If you don't have the password, try qpdf --password=X --decrypt. Run qpdf --show-encryption to inspect what protection is applied.

Corrupted PDFs: Run qpdf --check to diagnose structural problems, then qpdf --replace-input to attempt repair.

Text extraction fails: If pdfplumber or pdftotext return empty/garbled text, the PDF is likely scanned images. Fall back to OCR (see below).

OCR for Scanned PDFs

import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

pages = convert_from_path("scan_output.pdf", dpi=300)
ocr_text = "\n\n".join(
    f"--- Page {n} ---\n{pytesseract.image_to_string(pg)}"
    for n, pg in enumerate(pages, 1)
)