Agent skill

pdf

Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. When the agent needs to fill in a PDF form or programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale.

Stars 0
Forks 0

Install this agent skill to your Project

npx add-skill https://github.com/ederheisler/agent-skills/tree/main/skills/pdf

Metadata

Additional technical details for this skill

author
anthropic
version
1.0

SKILL.md

PDF Processing Guide

Overview

This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see reference.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read forms.md and follow its instructions.

Quick Start

python
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()
```text

## Python Libraries

### pypdf - Basic Operations

#### Merge PDFs

```python
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

python
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)
```text

#### Extract Metadata

```python
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
meta = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
print(f"Subject: {meta.subject}")
print(f"Creator: {meta.creator}")

Rotate Pages

python
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90)  # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
writer.add_page(page)

with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)
```text

### pdfplumber - Text and Table Extraction

#### Extract Text with Layout

```python
import pdfplumber

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

Extract Tables

python
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for i, page in enumerate(pdf.pages):
        tables = page.extract_tables()
        for j, table in enumerate(tables):
            print(f"Table {j+1} on page {i+1}:")
            for row in table:
                print(row)
```text

#### Advanced Table Extraction

```python
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:  # Check if table is not empty
                df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
                all_tables.append(df)

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

reportlab - Create PDFs

Basic PDF Creation

python
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

c = canvas.Canvas("hello.pdf", pagesize=letter)
width, height = letter

# Add text
c.drawString(100, height - 100, "Hello World!")
c.drawString(100, height - 120, "This is a PDF created with reportlab")

# Add a line
c.line(100, height - 140, 400, height - 140)

# Save
c.save()
```text

#### Create PDF with Multiple Pages

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

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = []

# Add content
title = Paragraph("Report Title", styles['Title'])
story.append(title)
story.append(Spacer(1, 12))

body = Paragraph("This is the body of the report. " * 20, styles['Normal'])
story.append(body)
story.append(PageBreak())

# Page 2
story.append(Paragraph("Page 2", styles['Heading1']))
story.append(Paragraph("Content for page 2", styles['Normal']))

# Build PDF
doc.build(story)

Command-Line Tools

pdftotext (poppler-utils)

bash
# Extract text
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

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

# Extract specific pages
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt  # Pages 1-5
```text

### qpdf

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

# Split pages
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 6-10 -- pages6-10.pdf

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

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

pdftk (if available)

bash
# Merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

# Split
pdftk input.pdf burst

# Rotate
pdftk input.pdf rotate 1east output rotated.pdf
```text

## Common Tasks

### Extract Text from Scanned PDFs

```python
# Requires: pip install pytesseract pdf2image
import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

# Convert PDF to images
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')

# OCR each page
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
    text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
    text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
    text += "\n\n"

print(text)

Add Watermark

python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Create watermark (or load existing)
watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]

# Apply to all pages
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark)
    writer.add_page(page)

with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as output:
    writer.write(output)
```text

### Extract Images

```bash
# Using pdfimages (poppler-utils)
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix

# This extracts all images as output_prefix-000.jpg, output_prefix-001.jpg, etc.

Password Protection

python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()

for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)

# Add password
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")

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

Quick Reference

Task Best Tool Command/Code
Merge PDFs pypdf writer.add_page(page)
Split PDFs pypdf One page per file
Extract text pdfplumber page.extract_text()
Extract tables pdfplumber page.extract_tables()
Create PDFs reportlab Canvas or Platypus
Command line merge qpdf qpdf --empty --pages ...
OCR scanned PDFs pytesseract Convert to image first
Fill PDF forms pdf-lib or pypdf (see forms.md) See forms.md

Next Steps

  • For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see reference.md
  • For JavaScript libraries (pdf-lib), see reference.md
  • If you need to fill out a PDF form, follow the instructions in forms.md
  • For troubleshooting guides, see reference.md

Expand your agent's capabilities with these related and highly-rated skills.

ederheisler/agent-skills

terraform-style-guide

Write and review OpenTofu-first HCL using current style conventions and safe infrastructure patterns. Use whenever editing Terraform or OpenTofu configuration, modules, variables, outputs, providers, or imports. Prefer OpenTofu commands and OpenTofu documentation unless the user explicitly needs Terraform-only behavior.

0 0
Explore
ederheisler/agent-skills

brainstorming

You MUST use this before any creative work - creating features, building components, adding functionality, or modifying behavior. Explores user intent, requirements and design before implementation.

0 0
Explore
ederheisler/agent-skills

test-driven-development

Use when implementing any feature or bugfix, before writing implementation code

0 0
Explore
ederheisler/agent-skills

fastapi

Build Python APIs with FastAPI, Pydantic v2, and SQLAlchemy 2.0 async. Covers project structure, JWT auth, validation, and database integration with uv package manager. Prevents 7 documented errors. Use when: creating Python APIs, implementing JWT auth, or troubleshooting 422 validation, CORS, async blocking, form data, background tasks, or OpenAPI schema errors.

0 0
Explore
ederheisler/agent-skills

documentation-generation

You are a documentation expert specializing in creating comprehensive, maintainable documentation from code. Generate API docs, architecture diagrams, user guides, and technical references using AI...

0 0
Explore
ederheisler/agent-skills

session-behavior

0 0
Explore

Didn't find tool you were looking for?

Be as detailed as possible for better results