Document PDF Skill — Quick Reference

• PDF is a release artifact, not the editable source of truth.
• Validate export fidelity (fonts, images, links) and accessibility where required.
• Accessibility: if compliance matters, target a tagged/structured PDF workflow (often PDF/UA-aligned) and validate with tooling.
• EU distribution: EAA (June 2025) typically implies EN 301 549 expectations for customer-facing PDFs.
• Treat PDFs as sensitive: scrub metadata, ensure real redaction, and control distribution.

Core Decision Rules (2026)

• First decide: born-digital PDF (selectable text) vs scanned PDF (images). Scanned PDFs usually require OCR; see

  references/pdf-extraction-patterns.md

  .
• If the user needs accessibility/compliance, prefer generating from a source format that supports structure (DOCX/HTML + proper export) rather than “post-fixing” an untagged PDF.
• For deterministic ops (merge/split/rotate/scrub), prefer

  scripts/

  helpers over re-implementing ad hoc.
• Never treat black rectangles or overlays as redaction; use real redaction and verify by copy/paste + search.

Quick Reference

When to Use This Skill

• Generate PDFs from data (invoices, reports, certificates)
• Extract text or tables from existing PDFs
• Merge multiple PDFs into one document
• Split PDFs into separate files
• Fill PDF forms programmatically
• Add watermarks, headers, footers
• Convert HTML/web pages to PDF

Default Workflow

• Create: pick

  pdfkit

  (Node) or

  ReportLab

  (Python) and start from

  assets/invoice-template.md

  or

  assets/report-template.md

  ; for advanced layouts use

  references/pdf-generation-patterns.md

  .
• Extract: use

  references/pdf-extraction-patterns.md

  (text/tables/images/metadata + OCR fallback).
• Ship: run

  assets/pdf-release-checklist.md

  (fidelity, links, accessibility baseline, privacy).

Scripts (Deterministic Operations)

• Merge:

  python3 scripts/merge_pdfs.py merged.pdf a.pdf b.pdf

• Split:

  python3 scripts/split_pdf.py in.pdf out_dir --each-page

• Rotate:

  python3 scripts/rotate_pdf.py in.pdf out.pdf --degrees 90

• Scrub metadata:

  python3 scripts/scrub_metadata.py in.pdf out.pdf

PDF Structure Patterns

Invoice Template

INVOICE STRUCTURE
├── Header (logo, company info, invoice #)
├── Bill To / Ship To blocks
├── Line items table
│   ├── Description | Qty | Unit Price | Total
│   └── Subtotal, Tax, Total
├── Payment terms
└── Footer (contact, thank you)

Report Template

REPORT PDF STRUCTURE
├── Cover page (title, author, date)
├── Table of contents
├── Body sections with page numbers
├── Charts/images with captions
├── Appendices
└── Running header/footer

Decision Tree

PDF Task: [What do you need?]
    ├─ Create new PDF?
    │   ├─ Simple text/tables → pdfkit (Node) or ReportLab (Python)
    │   ├─ Complex layouts → ReportLab with Platypus
    │   └─ From HTML → Puppeteer or wkhtmltopdf
    │
    ├─ Extract from PDF?
    │   ├─ Text only → pdfplumber (Python)
    │   ├─ Tables → pdfplumber or camelot (Python)
    │   └─ Images → PyMuPDF/fitz (Python)
    │
    ├─ Modify existing PDF?
    │   ├─ Add text/images → pdf-lib (Node)
    │   ├─ Merge/split → pypdf or pdf-lib
    │   └─ Fill forms → pdf-lib
    │
    └─ Batch processing?
        └─ pypdf + pdfplumber pipeline

Do / Avoid (Jan 2026)

Do

• Keep a versioned source document (doc/slide/design file) alongside the PDF.
• Verify links and reading order for long documents.
• Use real redaction and test by copy/paste.

Avoid

• Editing PDFs as the primary workflow when a source doc exists.
• Shipping PDFs with broken links or illegible charts.
• Including customer PII or secrets in PDFs without explicit approval.

What Good Looks Like

• Fidelity: export is reproducible from a versioned source file (doc/slide/design) and looks identical across viewers.
• Accessibility: tags/reading order are correct; links work; scanned docs are OCRed when appropriate.
• Release hygiene: file naming includes version/date; metadata is clean; no “PDF as source of truth”.
• Security: redaction is verified (copy/paste test) and sensitive data is minimized.
• QA: release checklist completed using

  assets/pdf-release-checklist.md

  .

Optional: AI / Automation

• Generate a release checklist run; humans verify the final PDF manually.

Navigation

• references/pdf-generation-patterns.md — Complex layouts, multi-page docs
• references/pdf-extraction-patterns.md — Text, table, image extraction
• data/sources.json — Library documentation links

• assets/invoice-template.md — Invoice PDF generation
• assets/report-template.md — Multi-page report structure
• assets/pdf-release-checklist.md — Links, accessibility, export fidelity

• ../document-docx/SKILL.md — Word document generation
• ../document-xlsx/SKILL.md — Excel/spreadsheet workflows
• ../document-pptx/SKILL.md — PowerPoint presentations