pdf-read

name	pdf-read
description	Extract and read text content from PDF files using pdftotext (poppler). Use when asked to read, open, view, analyze, summarize, or extract text from a PDF file. Triggers on keywords: read pdf, open pdf, pdf content, extract text, pdf file, what does this pdf say.
allowed-tools	["bash"]

PDF Read — pdftotext

Extract selectable text from PDF files using pdftotext (part of the poppler utilities).

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Prerequisites

Verify pdftotext is available before proceeding:

which pdftotext

If not found, install it:

brew install poppler

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Basic usage

Output extracted text to stdout so the Bash tool captures it directly — no temp files needed:

pdftotext path/to/file.pdf -

The trailing - sends output to stdout instead of writing a .txt file.

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Options reference

Flag	Purpose
-f <N>	First page to convert (1-based)
-l <N>	Last page to convert
-layout	Preserve original physical layout (columns, spacing)
-nopgbrk	Omit form-feed characters between pages
-opw <password>	Owner password for encrypted PDFs
-upw <password>	User password for encrypted PDFs
-q	Suppress error/warning messages

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Workflow

Step 1 — Check tool availability

which pdftotext

If missing, run brew install poppler and stop until it is installed.

Step 2 — Extract full text

pdftotext path/to/file.pdf -

Read the captured output and use it to answer the user's question.

Step 3 — Large PDFs: extract by page range

If the full document is too large, target specific pages:

# First 10 pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 10 path/to/file.pdf -

# Pages 20–30
pdftotext -f 20 -l 30 path/to/file.pdf -

Step 4 — Preserve layout if text appears garbled

Some PDFs use complex column layouts. If extracted text looks disordered, add -layout:

pdftotext -layout path/to/file.pdf -

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Empty output — scanned / image-only PDFs

If pdftotext returns empty or near-empty text, the PDF likely contains scanned images with no selectable text layer. Fall back to OCR:

OCR fallback with tesseract

Install:

brew install tesseract poppler

Convert each PDF page to an image, then OCR it:

# Split PDF into per-page PNGs
pdftoppm -r 300 -png path/to/file.pdf /tmp/pdf-pages

# OCR all pages and concatenate output
for img in /tmp/pdf-pages-*.png; do
  tesseract "$img" stdout -l eng
done

Use -l nor for Norwegian, -l eng+nor for mixed language documents. tesseract --list-langs shows all installed language packs.

Install Norwegian language pack if needed:

brew install tesseract-lang

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Common issues

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Empty output	Scanned / image-only PDF	Use OCR fallback (see above)
Garbled column order	Multi-column layout	Add -layout flag
Page-break ^L characters in output	Default behaviour	Add -nopgbrk
Error: Couldn't open file	Wrong path or permissions	Verify path with ls -l
Error: PDF file is damaged	Corrupt file	Try qpdf --check file.pdf to diagnose
Encrypted / password-protected	Missing password	Use -opw or -upw with the password