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PDF Processing Guide

Official
anthropics·vlatest·writing

Extracts text, tables, and images from PDF documents with high accuracy for writing projects.

Repositoryskills.sh

Install on your platform

Showing Claude Code. One command installs this skill into any of the agents below.

  1. 1

    Run this in your project

    terminal
    $ npx skills add anthropics/skills --skill pdf -a claude-code

  2. Uses the open-source skills CLI and needs Node.js. Add -g to install it for your user instead of this project.

What we know about this skill

Publisher

anthropics

Matched to the vendor's own GitHub organisation.

Install target

Live repository

Not pinned. Installing fetches whatever the repository holds at the time you run the command.

No human has reviewed this code. The checks below are a static scan of the files at one commit — nobody has run this skill or judged whether it works. A skill runs with whatever access you give your agent, so read the source before you install it.

Automated safety checks

scanned

This skill passed all 6 checks. We read its files at one commit and looked for the things that make a skill dangerous to run — not for whether it works.

  • Declares what it does: passed

    SKILL.md parses and declares a name and a description.

    SKILL.md exists, its frontmatter parses, and it declares a name and a description.

  • No undeclared network calls: passed

    Makes no network calls.

    Every host the skill dials — from its scripts, its config endpoints or the commands it tells the agent to run — is either well-known package and API infrastructure or declared in its own frontmatter. Links in documentation are not counted.

  • No obfuscated payloads: passed

    No encoded or obfuscated payloads.

    No base64, hex or compressed blob is decoded and then executed, and no encoded shell commands.

  • No credential access: passed

    Reads no keys, tokens, keychains or credential files.

    Neither the code nor the SKILL.md instructions read SSH keys, cloud credentials, keychains, token stores, browser cookie databases or dotfiles that hold secrets.

  • No pipe-to-shell installers: passed

    No pipe-to-shell or download-and-run installers.

    No `curl … | sh` pattern, in the code or in the instructions, that runs code fetched at run time.

  • Pinned to a commit: passed

    Scanned anthropics/skills at dbd4588f9e.

    The exact upstream commit SHA that was scanned is recorded, so the result refers to specific bytes.

Commit
dbd4588f9e
Manifest
skills/pdf/SKILL.md
Scanned
12 files, 1,720 lines
This is a static scan, not a review. It reads the skill's files; it does not run them, and it cannot tell you whether the skill is any good or whether the code does what its description says. A skill runs with whatever access you give your agent.
What each check looks for →

About this skill

What it does

This skill enables AI agents to read, extract information from, and summarize PDF documents. It supports handling various PDF formats, including scanned pages with OCR capabilities, and can convert the extracted text into structured summaries or key points.

When to use it

  • To quickly extract important details from lengthy research papers or reports.
  • For summarizing legal documents or contracts before review.
  • When converting scanned PDFs into editable text for further processing.
  • To gather insights from technical manuals or whitepapers without reading the full content.

Key capabilities

  • Extracting text and images from PDF files
  • Performing OCR on scanned pages
  • Summarizing content in natural language
  • Supporting multiple languages in extracted text

Example prompts

  • "Summarize this PDF document."
  • "Extract all the headings and subheadings from the report."
  • "Convert the scanned PDF into editable text."

Tips & gotchas

  • For best results, ensure that the PDF is not password protected or heavily encrypted.
  • OCR accuracy may vary depending on the quality of the scan or image in the PDF.