PDF Skill

When to use

• Read or review PDF content where layout and visuals matter.
• Create PDFs programmatically with reliable formatting.
• Validate final rendering before delivery.

Workflow

1. Prefer visual review: render PDF pages to PNGs and inspect them.
   • Use

     pdftoppm

     if available.
   • If unavailable, install Poppler or ask the user to review the output locally.
2. Use

   reportlab

   to generate PDFs when creating new documents.
3. Use

   pdfplumber

   (or

   pypdf

   ) for text extraction and quick checks; do not rely on it for layout fidelity.
4. After each meaningful update, re-render pages and verify alignment, spacing, and legibility.

Temp and output conventions

• Use

  tmp/pdfs/

  for intermediate files; delete when done.
• Write final artifacts under

  output/pdf/

  when working in this repo.
• Keep filenames stable and descriptive.

Dependencies (install if missing)

uv

uv pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf

uv

python3 -m pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install poppler

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils

Environment

Rendering command

pdftoppm -png $INPUT_PDF $OUTPUT_PREFIX

Quality expectations

• Maintain polished visual design: consistent typography, spacing, margins, and section hierarchy.
• Avoid rendering issues: clipped text, overlapping elements, broken tables, black squares, or unreadable glyphs.
• Charts, tables, and images must be sharp, aligned, and clearly labeled.
• Use ASCII hyphens only. Avoid U+2011 (non-breaking hyphen) and other Unicode dashes.
• Citations and references must be human-readable; never leave tool tokens or placeholder strings.

Final checks

• Do not deliver until the latest PNG inspection shows zero visual or formatting defects.
• Confirm headers/footers, page numbering, and section transitions look polished.
• Keep intermediate files organized or remove them after final approval.

When NOT to Use