pdf-text-extractor

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Download PDFs (when available) and extract plain text to support full-text evidence, writing `papers/fulltext_index.jsonl` and `papers/fulltext/*.txt`. **Trigger**: PDF download, fulltext, extract text, papers/pdfs, 全文抽取, 下载PDF. **Use when**: `queries.md` 设置 `evidence_mode: fulltext`（或你明确需要全文证据）并希望为 paper notes/claims 提供更强 evidence。 **Skip if**: `evidence_mode: abstract`（默认）；或你不希望进行下载/抽取（成本/权限/时间）。 **Network**: fulltext 下载通常需要网络（除非你手工提供 PDF 缓存在 `papers/pdfs/`）。 **Guardrail**: 缓存下载到 `papers/pdfs/`；默认不覆盖已有抽取文本（除非显式要求重抽）。

1installs

Sourcewilloscar/research-units-pipeline-skills

Added on2026-02-08

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add willoscar/research-units-pipeline-skills pdf-text-extractor

SKILL.md Content

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PDF Text Extractor

Optionally collect full-text snippets to deepen evidence beyond abstracts.

This skill is intentionally conservative: in many survey runs, abstract/snippet mode is enough and avoids heavy downloads.

Inputs

papers/core_set.csv

(expects

paper_id

,

title

, and ideally

pdf_url

/

arxiv_id

/

url

)

Optional:
```
outline/mapping.tsv
```
(to prioritize mapped papers)

Outputs

```
papers/fulltext_index.jsonl
```
(one record per attempted paper)

Side artifacts:

```
papers/pdfs/<paper_id>.pdf
```
(cached downloads)
```
papers/fulltext/<paper_id>.txt
```
(extracted text)

Decision: evidence mode

```
queries.md
```
can set
```
evidence_mode: "abstract" | "fulltext"
```
.
- ```
abstract
```
  (default template): do not download; write an index that clearly records skipping.
- ```
fulltext
```
  : download PDFs (when possible) and extract text to
```
papers/fulltext/
```
  .

Local PDFs Mode

When you cannot/should not download PDFs (restricted network, rate limits, no permission), provide PDFs manually and run in “local PDFs only” mode.

PDF naming convention:

papers/pdfs/<paper_id>.pdf

where

<paper_id>

matches

papers/core_set.csv

.

Set
```
- evidence_mode: "fulltext"
```
in
```
queries.md
```
.

Run:

python .codex/skills/pdf-text-extractor/scripts/run.py --workspace <ws> --local-pdfs-only

If PDFs are missing, the script writes a to-do list:

```
output/MISSING_PDFS.md
```
(human-readable summary)
```
papers/missing_pdfs.csv
```
(machine-readable list)

Workflow (heuristic)

Read
```
papers/core_set.csv
```
.
If
```
outline/mapping.tsv
```
exists, prioritize mapped papers first.
For each selected paper (fulltext mode):
- resolve
```
pdf_url
```
  (use
```
pdf_url
```
  , else derive from
```
arxiv_id
```
  /
```
url
```
  when possible)
- download to
```
papers/pdfs/<paper_id>.pdf
```
  if missing
- extract a reasonable prefix of text to
```
papers/fulltext/<paper_id>.txt
```
- append/update a JSONL record in
```
papers/fulltext_index.jsonl
```
  with status + stats
Never overwrite existing extracted text unless explicitly requested (delete the
```
.txt
```
to re-extract).

Quality checklist

```
papers/fulltext_index.jsonl
```
exists and is non-empty.
If
```
evidence_mode: "fulltext"
```
: at least a small but non-trivial subset has extracted text (strict mode blocks if extraction coverage is near-zero).
If
```
evidence_mode: "abstract"
```
: the index records clearly reflect skip status (no downloads attempted).

Script

Quick Start

python .codex/skills/pdf-text-extractor/scripts/run.py --help

python .codex/skills/pdf-text-extractor/scripts/run.py --workspace <workspace_dir>

All Options

```
--max-papers <n>
```
: cap number of papers processed (can be overridden by
```
queries.md
```
)
```
--max-pages <n>
```
: extract at most N pages per PDF
```
--min-chars <n>
```
: minimum extracted chars to count as OK
```
--sleep <sec>
```
: delay between downloads

--local-pdfs-only

: do not download; only use

papers/pdfs/<paper_id>.pdf

if present

queries.md

supports:

evidence_mode

,

fulltext_max_papers

,

fulltext_max_pages

,

fulltext_min_chars

Examples

Abstract mode (no downloads):
- Set
```
- evidence_mode: "abstract"
```
  in
```
queries.md
```
  , then run the script (it will emit
```
papers/fulltext_index.jsonl
```
  with skip statuses)

Fulltext mode with local PDFs only:

Set

- evidence_mode: "fulltext"

in

queries.md

, put PDFs under

papers/pdfs/

, then run:

python .codex/skills/pdf-text-extractor/scripts/run.py --workspace <ws> --local-pdfs-only

Fulltext mode with smaller budget:

python .codex/skills/pdf-text-extractor/scripts/run.py --workspace <ws> --max-papers 20 --max-pages 4 --min-chars 1200

Notes

Downloads are cached under
```
papers/pdfs/
```
; extracted text is cached under
```
papers/fulltext/
```
.
The script does not overwrite existing extracted text unless you delete the
```
.txt
```
file.

Troubleshooting

Issue: no PDFs are available to download

Fix:

Use
```
evidence_mode: abstract
```
(default) or provide local PDFs under
```
papers/pdfs/
```
and rerun with
```
--local-pdfs-only
```
.

Issue: extracted text is empty/garbled