pdf-ocr

A local tool that converts PDF pages into Markdown, plain text with simple formatting, using optical character recognition (OCR) to read text from page images. It runs through Ollama, a local system for running AI models.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to turn PDF documents into Markdown files for reading, searching, or further processing.
Why use it?
It extracts text from scanned or image-based PDFs when ordinary text copying is unavailable or unreliable.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/alteredcraft/claude-code-plugins/pdf-ocr
Any agent
npx skills add AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins --skill pdf-ocr
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 903 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00046 $0.00903
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00451
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00181
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00090

Measured 2d ago against content hash 13b9d5ca7520, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pdf-ocr scanned grade A with 1 finding 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 2d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/pdf_ocr.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

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.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

| Ollama running | `curl -sf http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/tags > /dev/null` | **Cannot auto-start.** Tell user to start Ollama and stop. |
plugins/document-gen/skills/pdf-ocr/SKILL.md · 81 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 81 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PDF OCR via GLM-OCR + Ollama

Convert PDF files to markdown using local OCR. Each page is rendered to an image, processed through GLM-OCR running on Ollama, and the recognized text is assembled into a single markdown file.

Workflow

Phase 1: Dependency Check

Run these checks and report a status table. If any required dependency is missing, use AskUserQuestion to offer installation.

Dependency Check Install
Ollama running curl -sf http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/tags > /dev/null Cannot auto-start. Tell user to start Ollama and stop.
glm-ocr model Check that Ollama tags response contains glm-ocr ollama pull glm-ocr
pdftoppm which pdftoppm brew install poppler
pdfinfo which pdfinfo Comes with poppler
sips which sips Built-in on macOS. Warn if missing.

Check all five in a single Bash call:

echo "=== Ollama ===" && curl -sf http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/tags && echo "" && echo "=== pdftoppm ===" && which pdftoppm && echo "=== pdfinfo ===" && which pdfinfo && echo "=== sips ===" && which sips

Parse the output:

  • If curl fails: Ollama is not running. Stop and tell user to start Ollama.
  • If glm-ocr is not in the tags list: ask user if they want to pull it (ollama pull glm-ocr).
  • If pdftoppm or pdfinfo missing: ask user if they want to install poppler (brew install poppler).
  • If sips missing: warn user (built-in on macOS, no auto-install).

If all checks pass, proceed to Phase 2.

Phase 2: Execute OCR

  1. Validate the argument is a path to an existing .pdf file. If no argument was provided, print usage and stop:

    Usage: /pdf-ocr <path-to-pdf> Converts a PDF to markdown using local GLM-OCR via Ollama.

  2. Determine the output path: same directory as the PDF, same base name with .md extension.

  3. Get the page count to decide foreground vs background execution:

pdfinfo "<pdf_path>" | grep "^Pages:"
  1. Run the OCR script:

Read the full file on GitHub · 81 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 81 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A 13b9d5ca7520

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pdf-ocr is a skill published in the GitHub repository AlteredCraft/claude-code-plugins (13 stars, last pushed 3mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 903 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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