research-reference-pdf-txt-conversion

name	research-reference-pdf-txt-conversion
description	Converts research PDFs into readable TXT mirrors using text extraction first and OCR fallback second. Use when handling scanned literature, checking text-layer quality, improving reference coverage, or generating reviewable OCR manifests.

Research Reference PDF-TXT Conversion

Purpose

Use this skill when building or improving a literature library for research or writing.

Typical tasks:

• convert PDFs to TXT mirrors
• detect whether PDFs already contain text
• route scanned files to OCR
• generate manifests and quality reports
• improve coverage in small reviewable batches

Core rules

1. Audit first, then apply.
2. Prefer direct text extraction before OCR.
3. Do not overwrite good TXT files unless explicitly requested.
4. Mark poor results honestly as needs_ocr or failed.
5. Always leave a report or candidate board.

Suggested flow

Route A — Text-layer audit

Check whether the PDF is already machine-readable.

Route B — Direct extraction

Extract usable text and generate a TXT mirror.

Route C — OCR fallback

Only use OCR for scanned or very low-text files.

Route D — Batch review

Review quality scores before scaling the next batch.

Expected outputs

• TXT mirrors
• manifest files
• OCR candidate board
• conversion summary report

Boundary

This skill stops at conversion and audit. Evidence extraction, literature synthesis, and paragraph writing should be handled by separate skills.