Pdf

Create, merge, split, fill, and secure PDF files.

Skill metadata

Source	Bundled (installed by default)
Path	skills/productivity/pdf
Version	1.0.0
Author	Anthropic (adapted by Nous Research)
License	Proprietary. LICENSE.txt has complete terms
Platforms	linux, macos, windows
Tags	PDF, Documents, Forms, Office, Productivity
Related skills	ocr-and-documents, nano-pdf, docx, xlsx

Reference: full SKILL.md

info

The following is the complete skill definition that Hermes loads when this skill is triggered. This is what the agent sees as instructions when the skill is active.

PDF Skill

Create, combine, split, transform, and secure PDF files — merging, page manipulation, form filling, watermarks, encryption, and text/table extraction. For heavy text extraction from scanned documents prefer the ocr-and-documents skill; for natural-language edits to existing PDF text prefer nano-pdf.

When to Use

Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files: reading or extracting text/tables, combining or merging multiple PDFs, splitting PDFs apart, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs, filling PDF forms, encrypting/decrypting, extracting images, or OCR on scanned PDFs. If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill.

Prerequisites

pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab
which pdftotext || sudo apt install -y poppler-utils   # pdftotext, pdftoppm, pdfimages
which qpdf || sudo apt install -y qpdf                 # CLI merge/split/decrypt

macOS: brew install poppler qpdf. OCR extras: pip install pytesseract pdf2image + sudo apt install -y tesseract-ocr.

Script paths below are relative to this skill's directory. Form filling has its own workflow — read forms.md and follow it. Advanced library usage (pypdfium2, pdf-lib) and troubleshooting: reference.md.

Quick Reference

Task	Best Tool	Command/Code
Merge PDFs	pypdf	writer.add_page(page) per page
Split PDFs	pypdf	One page per file
Extract text	pdfplumber	page.extract_text()
Extract tables	pdfplumber	page.extract_tables()
Create PDFs	reportlab	Canvas or Platypus
Command-line merge/split	qpdf	qpdf --empty --pages ...
OCR scanned PDFs	pytesseract	Convert to images first (or use ocr-and-documents)
Fill PDF forms	see forms.md	scripts/fill_fillable_fields.py etc.
Edit existing text	nano-pdf skill	nano-pdf edit file.pdf <page> "<instruction>"

Common operations

Merge / split / rotate (pypdf)

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Merge
writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf"]:
    for page in PdfReader(pdf_file).pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

# Split: one file per page
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    w = PdfWriter(); w.add_page(page)
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as f:
        w.write(f)

# Rotate
page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90)  # clockwise

Extract text and tables (pdfplumber)

import pdfplumber, pandas as pd

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    text = "\n".join(page.extract_text() or "" for page in pdf.pages)
    tables = [pd.DataFrame(t[1:], columns=t[0])
              for page in pdf.pages
              for t in page.extract_tables() if t]

Create PDFs (reportlab)

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer, PageBreak
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("report.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = [Paragraph("Report Title", styles["Title"]), Spacer(1, 12),
         Paragraph("Body text...", styles["Normal"]), PageBreak(),
         Paragraph("Page 2", styles["Heading1"])]
doc.build(story)

Subscripts/superscripts: never use Unicode sub/superscript characters (₀₁₂, ⁰¹²) — the built-in fonts lack the glyphs and render solid black boxes. Use <sub>/<super> markup inside Paragraph objects: Paragraph("H<sub>2</sub>O", styles['Normal']). For canvas-drawn text, adjust font size and position manually.

Command-line tools

pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt                     # text, layout preserved
pdftotext -f 1 -l 5 input.pdf output.txt                   # pages 1-5
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf     # merge
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf               # split range
qpdf input.pdf output.pdf --rotate=+90:1                   # rotate page 1
qpdf --password=pw --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf   # remove password
pdfimages -j input.pdf img                                 # extract images

Watermark

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter

watermark = PdfReader("watermark.pdf").pages[0]
reader, writer = PdfReader("document.pdf"), PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    page.merge_page(watermark)
    writer.add_page(page)
with open("watermarked.pdf", "wb") as f:
    writer.write(f)

Password protection

writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")

OCR scanned PDFs

import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

pages = convert_from_path("scanned.pdf")
text = "\n\n".join(pytesseract.image_to_string(img) for img in pages)

For batch/structured extraction from scans, the ocr-and-documents skill (pymupdf, marker-pdf) is the better path.

Form filling

Read forms.md first — it distinguishes fillable (AcroForm) PDFs from flat scanned forms and walks through the helper scripts:

• scripts/check_fillable_fields.py — does the PDF have AcroForm fields?
• scripts/extract_form_field_info.py / scripts/extract_form_structure.py — enumerate fields
• scripts/fill_fillable_fields.py — fill AcroForm fields
• scripts/fill_pdf_form_with_annotations.py — overlay text on flat forms
• scripts/check_bounding_boxes.py, scripts/create_validation_image.py — verify placement visually

Pitfalls

• page.extract_text() returns None on image-only pages — guard with or "" and fall back to OCR.
• pypdf preserves encryption flags: reading an encrypted PDF requires PdfReader(path, password=...) before pages are accessible.
• reportlab coordinates are bottom-left origin, points (1/72″) — not top-left.
• When filling flat forms by annotation overlay, always render a validation image and check the placement before delivering.

Verification

1. Open the output with PdfReader and assert the expected page count.
2. Re-extract text from the output (pdftotext or pdfplumber) and confirm the content you added is present.
3. For anything visual (watermarks, filled forms, created reports): pdftoppm -jpeg -r 100 output.pdf page and inspect the images with vision_analyze.

Related skills

ocr-and-documents (scanned-document text extraction), nano-pdf (NL text edits in place), docx (Word), xlsx (spreadsheets), powerpoint (decks).