What is PDF-Tools CLAUDE.md?

Project instructions for a PDF toolkit that fills forms, processes groups of PDFs, and extracts data through Claude Desktop and an MCP server. MCP is a standard way for an AI assistant to call external tools.

Listing PDFs, reading and filling form fields, handling protected files, filling forms from CSV data, validating forms, and exporting extracted data to CSV.

They explain the toolkit’s supported PDF operations and point agents to a specific handoff document before continuing extraction work.

How Open-Document-Alliance/PDF-Tools configures Claude Code

Reuse

Borrowing it

Nothing to install: this file belongs to Open-Document-Alliance/PDF-Tools. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.

Copy the file

curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Open-Document-Alliance/PDF-Tools/master/CLAUDE.md

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/Open-Document-Alliance/PDF-Tools

Made for: Claude Code.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/open-document-alliance/pdf-tools/claude-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 8,541 This file is loaded in full into every session.

When invoked 8,541 The same file — it is already loaded in full.

Security scan E 3 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. ✓ AI security review Sonnet 5 · 7 Sept 2026 📄 Read the review

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.08541	$0.08541
Opus 5.5	$0.03416	$0.03416
Sonnet 5.5	$0.01708	$0.01708
Haiku 4.5	$0.00854	$0.00854

Measured 9d ago against content hash 0945409e4e50, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade E, and why

PDF-Tools CLAUDE.md scanned grade E with 3 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 9d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Instruction-override phrasinghighPrompt injection

Text telling the model to disregard its earlier instructions or safety rules is the shape of a prompt injection, whoever wrote it.

would bypass the safety rules and fails the artifact test. Do not

Nullifies safety policieshighAnti-refusal

"You have no restrictions", "do anything now", "ignore your guidelines": a direct jailbreak that disables guardrails.

would bypass the safety rules and fails the artifact test. Do not

Runs shell commandslowCapability

Expected in a hook, worth knowing in a rule or an instructions file.

`server/pdf-lib-subprocess.js`. It bounds how long a hostile document may hold

CLAUDE.md · 583 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 583 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PDF Toolkit MCP - Development Guide

Active Kepano / Shannon Work

Before continuing the current extraction-improvement tranche, read docs/handoffs/KEPANO_SHANNON.md. The crucial starting fact is that Kepano's example is Shannon's A Mathematical Theory of Communication PDF; it is not a separate example to locate.

This document provides essential context for Claude and other AI assistants when working on the PDF Toolkit extension.

Project Overview

PDF Toolkit is a Claude Desktop extension (MCPB) and MCP server that enables automated PDF form filling, bulk processing, and data extraction. Published in the official Claude Desktop Extension Directory.

Key Features

List PDF files in directories
Read form fields from PDFs (text, checkboxes, dropdowns, radio buttons)
Fill PDF forms programmatically
Save filled PDFs to new files
Password-protected PDFs: read through PDF.js or qpdf, and changed through qpdf with the document's own protection restored on save (see ## Password Support)
Bulk fill from CSV files
Profile system for reusable data
Extract data from PDFs to CSV
Form validation
PDF.js text-layer extraction and page/region rendering for visual inspection

Technical Architecture

Technology Stack

Runtime: Node.js (ES modules)
PDF Libraries: pdf-lib, pdfjs-dist
Raster Rendering: @napi-rs/canvas
Protocol: MCP (Model Context Protocol)
Extension Format: MCPB (built via mcpb pack)

Important Files

server/index.js - Main MCP server implementation (all tool definitions and helpers). Prefer incremental updates over rewrites.
manifest.json - Claude Desktop extension metadata and UI stub. Update versions alongside package.json.
manifest.mcpb.json - MCPB packaging manifest
package.json - Node.js dependencies
pdf-toolkit-mcp-share/ - Shareable package for Cursor users. Mirror changes from server/index.js when APIs evolve.
example-fw9.pdf - Sample form for smoke tests. Keep anonymized assets only.
docs/MAINTAINERS.md - Maintainer onboarding and operations
docs/RELEASE.md - Release checklist
server/qpdf-decrypt.js - The only path by which PDF Tools decrypts. Owns the password rules, the /P permission enforcement, the encrypted-input size cap, the one-at-a-time queue, and the 30-second deadline. It does not run qpdf itself. It also owns re-protection: restoring a source's own encryption onto the bytes a mutation produced, and proving the protection is unchanged before anything is written. See ## Password Support.
server/qpdf-decrypt-worker.js - The worker thread that does. The only module that loads the qpdf runtime, and never on the server's own thread. Decides nothing: it runs the qpdf passes the wrapper asks for and reports opaque reason codes.
vendor/qpdf-wasm/ - Reproducible QPDF WebAssembly build recipe. The promoted artifact under vendor/qpdf-wasm/runtime/ is shipped in both the MCPB and the share ZIP at that same path, and is loaded by exactly one module, server/qpdf-decrypt-worker.js, which is started from exactly one place, server/qpdf-decrypt.js — a second importer, or a second starter, would bypass the safety rules and fails the artifact test. Do not hand-edit runtime/ or runtime.provenance.json; regenerate them with node scripts/vendor-qpdf-wasm-runtime.mjs <extracted-build-directory>. npm run qpdf-wasm:verify is a ~45-minute Docker release gate and must stay out of npm test; the fast binding lives in test/qpdf-wasm-runtime-artifact.test.js.

Read the full file on GitHub · 583 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

9d ago Changed · +12 lines · +175 tokens per session 0945409e4e50
21d ago Changed · +2 lines · +75 tokens per session 02f3d58822b1
1mo ago Changed · +29 lines · +407 tokens per session 1f0162ce1aa8
1mo ago Changed · +2 lines · +86 tokens per session bc5bcc5c9b6a
1mo ago Changed · +5 lines · +109 tokens per session 9eecfc359062
1mo ago First seen · 533 lines · 7,689 tokens per session scan E 43c06417acb7

Subscribe to this mod's changes

PDF-Tools CLAUDE.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository Open-Document-Alliance/PDF-Tools (158 stars, last pushed 2d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 8,541 tokens to every session, about $0.0342 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it E with 3 findings (instruction-override phrasing, nullifies safety policies, runs shell commands). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Documents PDF Planning claude claude-desktop electronic-signature pdf-filler pdf-tools

vscode buildNext.instructions.md

Working notes and architecture documentation for the new esbuild-based build system in build/next. Use when making changes to the new build pipeline (transpile/bundle commands, NLS plugin, source-map handling, resource copying, or self-hosting watch tasks).

microsoft/vscode · 9,649 tokens

PDF-Tools: Instructions file for Claude Code