Agent skill
PDF Processing
Extract text and tables from PDF files, fill forms, merge documents. Use when working with PDF files or when the user mentions PDFs, forms, or document extraction.
Install this agent skill to your Project
npx add-skill https://github.com/89jobrien/steve/tree/main/steve/skills/pdf-processing
SKILL.md
PDF Processing
Quick start
Use pdfplumber to extract text from PDFs:
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text()
print(text)
Extracting tables
Extract tables from PDFs with automatic detection:
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("report.pdf") as pdf:
page = pdf.pages[0]
tables = page.extract_tables()
for table in tables:
for row in table:
print(row)
Extracting all pages
Process multi-page documents efficiently:
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
full_text = ""
for page in pdf.pages:
full_text += page.extract_text() + "\n\n"
print(full_text)
Form filling
For PDF form filling, see FORMS.md for the complete guide including field analysis and validation.
Merging PDFs
Combine multiple PDF files:
from pypdf import PdfMerger
merger = PdfMerger()
for pdf in ["file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf"]:
merger.append(pdf)
merger.write("merged.pdf")
merger.close()
Splitting PDFs
Extract specific pages or ranges:
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
# Extract pages 2-5
for page_num in range(1, 5):
writer.add_page(reader.pages[page_num])
with open("output.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Available packages
- pdfplumber - Text and table extraction (recommended)
- pypdf - PDF manipulation, merging, splitting
- pdf2image - Convert PDFs to images (requires poppler)
- pytesseract - OCR for scanned PDFs (requires tesseract)
Common patterns
Extract and save text:
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("input.pdf") as pdf:
text = "\n\n".join(page.extract_text() for page in pdf.pages)
with open("output.txt", "w") as f:
f.write(text)
Extract tables to CSV:
import pdfplumber
import csv
with pdfplumber.open("tables.pdf") as pdf:
tables = pdf.pages[0].extract_tables()
with open("output.csv", "w", newline="") as f:
writer = csv.writer(f)
for table in tables:
writer.writerows(table)
Error handling
Handle common PDF issues:
import pdfplumber
try:
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
if len(pdf.pages) == 0:
print("PDF has no pages")
else:
text = pdf.pages[0].extract_text()
if text is None or text.strip() == "":
print("Page contains no extractable text (might be scanned)")
else:
print(text)
except Exception as e:
print(f"Error processing PDF: {e}")
Performance tips
- Process pages in batches for large PDFs
- Use multiprocessing for multiple files
- Extract only needed pages rather than entire document
- Close PDF objects after use
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