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 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