pdf

name	pdf
version	1.0.0
description	Process PDF files — merge, split, extract text and tables, create PDFs, and handle scanned documents with OCR.
license	Apache-2.0
compatibility	Python libraries: pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, pytesseract, pdf2image. CLI tools: pdftotext (poppler-utils), qpdf, pdftk, pdfimages. Install Python deps: pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab pytesseract pdf2image pandas
metadata	{"category":"document-processing","tags":["pdf","documents","text-extraction","ocr","merge","split"]}

PDF Processing

This skill provides capabilities for processing PDF files using Python libraries and command-line tools.

Quick Start

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

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

# Extract text
text = ""
for page in reader.pages:
    text += page.extract_text()

Core Operations

Merge PDFs

from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader

writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf", "doc3.pdf"]:
    reader = PdfReader(pdf_file)
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)

with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Split PDF

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    writer = PdfWriter()
    writer.add_page(page)
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as output:
        writer.write(output)

Extract Text with Layout

import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        print(text)

Extract Tables

import pdfplumber
import pandas as pd

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    all_tables = []
    for page in pdf.pages:
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for table in tables:
            if table:
                df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
                all_tables.append(df)

if all_tables:
    combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
    combined_df.to_excel("extracted_tables.xlsx", index=False)

Create a PDF

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = [
    Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title']),
    Spacer(1, 12),
    Paragraph("Body content goes here.", styles['Normal']),
]
doc.build(story)

OCR Scanned PDFs

import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
    text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
    text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
    text += "\n\n"
print(text)

Command-Line Tools

# Extract text (preserving layout)
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt

# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf

# Split pages 1-5
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf

# Rotate page 1 by 90 degrees
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1

# Remove password
qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf

# Extract images
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix

Password Protection

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)

writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")
with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)

Quick Reference

Task	Best Tool	Notes
Merge PDFs	pypdf / qpdf
Split PDFs	pypdf / qpdf
Extract text	pdfplumber	Layout-aware
Extract tables	pdfplumber + pandas	Export to xlsx
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas or Platypus
OCR scanned PDFs	pytesseract	Convert to image first
Password protect	pypdf	User + owner passwords
Extract images	pdfimages	poppler-utils

Note: This skill is based on the pdf skill from anthropics/skills, one of the most popular skills on skills.sh. It has been repackaged as an OCI artifact for distribution via skills-oci.