lift-extraction

name	lift_extraction
description	Extract structured data from PDFs and images using the local lift model. Use when the user wants data pulled out of documents into JSON matching a schema.

lift extraction

Instructions

lift is a vision model that extracts structured JSON from documents. You give it a PDF or image plus a JSON schema; it returns a JSON object matching that schema. Use this skill whenever the user wants structured data out of a document (invoices, papers, forms, statements, contracts, ...).

lift needs an inference backend. Check availability first, in this order:

curl -s --max-time 3 "${VLLM_API_BASE:-http://localhost:8000/v1}/models"

• Response lists a model → server is up, proceed with --method vllm (the default).
• No server but the machine has a CUDA GPU → --method hf loads weights in-process (requires pip install lift-pdf[hf]; downloads ~19GB on first use).
• Neither → don't force it. Tell the user they can start a server with lift_vllm on a GPU machine, set VLLM_API_BASE to a remote server, or use the datalab_api skill (hosted, no GPU needed).

Writing schemas

Schemas are standard JSON Schema, kept simple:

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "invoice_number": {"type": "string", "description": "Invoice identifier"},
    "total": {"type": "number", "description": "Total amount due"},
    "line_items": {
      "type": "array",
      "items": {
        "type": "object",
        "properties": {
          "description": {"type": "string"},
          "amount": {"type": "number"}
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "required": ["invoice_number", "total"]
}

Guidelines:

• Types: string, number, integer, boolean, arrays of those, arrays of objects, nested objects.
• Avoid enum, anyOf/oneOf, $ref, additionalProperties — the schema-constrained decoding skips schemas it can't compile, weakening output guarantees.
• Write description for any field whose name isn't self-explanatory — descriptions meaningfully improve accuracy.
• Mark a field required only when it must appear in the output; fields genuinely absent from the document should come back null.
• Ask the user what fields they want if it isn't obvious from their request. Look at the document first (or its first page) when designing a schema for them.

Reusable schemas live in the repo's schemas/ directory and can be referenced by name.

Extracting

CLI (preferred — handles PDFs, images, or whole directories):

lift_extract document.pdf output/ --schema schema.json
lift_extract scans/ output/ --schema '{"type": "object", "properties": {...}}'
lift_extract doc.pdf output/ --schema invoice --page-range 0-5,8

--schema accepts a file path, an inline JSON string, or a saved schema name from schemas/. Results land in output/{stem}.json (the extraction) and output/{stem}_metadata.json (pages, tokens, errors).

Python, when extraction is part of a larger script:

from lift import extract

result = extract("document.pdf", schema)  # schema: dict, path, inline JSON, or library name
if result.extraction is not None:
    data = result.extraction  # dict matching the schema

Pass model=InferenceManager(method="hf") to reuse a loaded model across many calls, and page_range="0-5" to limit PDF pages. Set VLLM_API_BASE (env or local.env) to target a remote server.

Troubleshooting

• Extraction is None / error in metadata: inspect raw in {stem}_metadata.json — usually truncated generation on very long documents. Retry with --page-range to limit pages, or split the document.
• All pages of a document are sent as one request; a 60-page PDF is ~50k tokens and needs a server started with a large --max-model-len (the lift_vllm launcher handles this).
• Values look wrong or hallucinated, or the user needs verified/cited results: use the datalab_api skill instead — its balanced mode runs per-field verification.