pdf Skill for AI Agents

# PDF Processing

Essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools.

## Python Libraries

### pypdf

Basic reading and writing operations:

```python
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Read PDF
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for page in reader.pages:
    text = page.extract_text()

# Write/merge PDFs
writer = PdfWriter()
writer.add_page(page)
writer.write("output.pdf")
```

### pdfplumber

Advanced text and table extraction:

```python
import pdfplumber

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        text = page.extract_text()
        tables = page.extract_tables()
```

### reportlab

Create new PDFs from scratch:

```python
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas

c = canvas.Canvas("new.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.drawString(100, 750, "Hello World")
c.save()
```

## Command-Line Tools

### pdftotext

Extract text from PDFs:
```bash
pdftotext input.pdf output.txt
```

### qpdf

Manipulate PDF structure:
```bash
qpdf --split-pages input.pdf output-%d.pdf
```

### pdftk

Merge, split, rotate:
```bash
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf
```

## Common Tasks

### OCR for Scanned Documents

Use pytesseract with pdf2image for scanned PDFs.

### Watermarking

Overlay text or images on existing PDFs.

### Image Extraction

Extract embedded images from PDF pages.

### Password Protection

Add or remove PDF encryption.

## Quick Reference

| Task | Tool |
|------|------|
| Extract text | pdfplumber, pdftotext |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber |
| Merge PDFs | pypdf, pdftk |
| Split PDFs | qpdf, pdftk |
| Create PDFs | reportlab |
| Rotate pages | pypdf, pdftk |
| Fill forms | pypdf |
| OCR | pytesseract |