pdf-reader

name	pdf-reader
description	Analyze PDF files attached by the user. Activates automatically when user uploads a PDF. Handles both text-based and scanned/image-based PDFs using file_read's built-in PDF rendering.
allowed-tools	file_read bash think

PDF Reader

Analyze PDF files using the file_read tool which natively supports PDF rendering.

How file_read handles PDFs

• file_read with a .pdf path renders pages as images for vision analysis
• Parameters: offset = start page (0-based), limit = max pages (default 5)
• Each page is rendered at 144 DPI, resized to 1568px max dimension
• Returns image blocks that you can analyze with vision

Workflow

1. Read the PDF: Call file_read with the PDF path. It will render pages as images automatically.

   {"path": "/path/to/file.pdf"}
   

2. For multi-page PDFs: Read in batches using offset and limit.

   {"path": "/path/to/file.pdf", "offset": 5, "limit": 5}
   

3. Analyze the content: The rendered pages come back as images. Describe what you see — text, tables, charts, forms, signatures, stamps, etc.

4. Extract text if needed: For text-heavy PDFs where you need exact content, use bash with python:

   python3 -c "
   import subprocess
   subprocess.check_call(['pip3', 'install', 'pymupdf', '-q'])
   import fitz
   doc = fitz.open('/path/to/file.pdf')
   for i, page in enumerate(doc):
       text = page.get_text()
       if text.strip():
           print(f'--- Page {i+1} ---')
           print(text)
   "
   

Tips

• Always start with file_read — it handles both scanned and text PDFs via vision
• For scanned PDFs (image-based), vision analysis through file_read is the primary method
• For text PDFs where exact character-level accuracy matters, supplement with python text extraction
• When summarizing, note the total page count and which pages you've analyzed