Document PDF Skill — Quick Reference

This skill enables PDF creation, extraction, manipulation, and analysis. Claude should apply these patterns when users need to generate invoices, reports, extract data from PDFs, merge documents, or work with PDF forms.

Modern Best Practices (Jan 2026):

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

Task	Tool/Library	Language	When to Use
Create PDF	pdfkit	Node.js	Reports, invoices, certificates
Create PDF	ReportLab	Python	Complex layouts, tables
Create PDF	FPDF2	Python	Simple PDFs with Unicode support
Create PDF	Borb	Python	Interactive elements, pure Python
Edit PDF	pdf-lib	Node.js	Modify existing PDFs, add pages
Extract text	pdfplumber	Python	OCR-free text extraction
OCR scanned PDF	PyMuPDF + Tesseract	Python	Scanned PDFs (no selectable text)
Extract tables	Camelot	Python	Tables with borders (Lattice mode)
Extract tables	Camelot/Tabula	Python	Tables without borders (Stream mode)
Parse/merge/split/rotate	pypdf	Python	Deterministic PDF manipulation
Fill forms	pdf-lib	Node.js	Form automation
HTML to PDF	Puppeteer/Playwright	Node.js	High-fidelity web page rendering
HTML to PDF	WeasyPrint	Python	CSS3-based, no browser needed

When to Use This Skill

Claude should invoke this skill when a user requests:

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)

Scripts are optional helpers; they assume Python 3 plus the listed dependencies in each file.

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

Use only when explicitly requested and policy-compliant.

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

Navigation

Resources

references/pdf-generation-patterns.md — Complex layouts, multi-page docs
references/pdf-extraction-patterns.md — Text, table, image extraction
references/pdf-accessibility-compliance.md — Tagged PDFs, PDF/UA, EAA compliance
references/pdf-forms-interactive.md — AcroForms, form filling, digital signatures
references/pdf-security-redaction.md — Encryption, permissions, real redaction
data/sources.json — Library documentation links

Templates

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

Related Skills

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

Fact-Checking

Use web search/web fetch to verify current external facts, versions, pricing, deadlines, regulations, or platform behavior before final answers.
Prefer primary sources; report source links and dates for volatile information.
If web access is unavailable, state the limitation and mark guidance as unverified.

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