pdf

A skill for processing PDF files from the terminal, including merging, splitting, extracting pages or text, converting between PDFs and images, and OCR. OCR turns scanned pages into searchable text.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect PDF information, combine or divide files, render pages, extract images, and add searchable text to scanned PDFs.
Why use it?
It provides defined command-line methods for common PDF changes and explains how to check whether the required utilities are installed.

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/atomicbot-ai/atomic-agent/pdf
Any agent
npx skills add AtomicBot-ai/atomic-agent --skill pdf
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/AtomicBot-ai/atomic-agent

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,013 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. 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 $0.00056 $0.01013
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00507
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00203
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00101

Measured 2d ago against content hash d1e2f0cf7afd, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pdf scanned grade A with 0 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 2d 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.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

starter-skills/pdf/SKILL.md · 92 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 92 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

pdf

Process PDF files from the terminal. Reading PDF text is best done with the built-in os.fs.read_document tool (pure-JS, no install). Reach for the CLIs below only for structural operations: merge, split, page extraction, PDF↔image rendering, and OCR.

Tooling:

  • qpdf — merge / split / linearize / encrypt (pure structural ops).
  • popplerpdfinfo, pdftotext, pdftoppm, pdfimages (inspect + render).
  • ocrmypdf — add a searchable text layer to scanned PDFs (optional).

Setup health check (run first, every session)

Verify with one solo step:

[{ "tool": "os.shell.run", "args": { "cmd": "pdfinfo", "args": ["-v"] } }]

Outcome map:

  • exit 0 + version → poppler present, proceed.
  • stderr command not found → enter Setup playbook → "tools missing".

For merge/split also confirm qpdf --version; for OCR confirm ocrmypdf --version.

Setup playbook (when prerequisites are missing)

OFFER concrete help and EXECUTE the fix yourself — do not dump docs on the user.

tools missing

Reply (solo reply step):

"The PDF utilities are not installed. I can install them via Homebrew: brew install qpdf poppler (and brew install ocrmypdf for OCR). Install them?"

On yes:

[{ "tool": "os.shell.run", "args": { "cmd": "brew", "args": ["install", "qpdf", "poppler"] } }]

On Linux use apt-get install qpdf poppler-utils ocrmypdf. If brew itself is missing, point the user at https://brew.sh/ and stop.

When to use

  • "Merge these PDFs", "split pages 3-7", "extract text from this PDF".
  • "Convert PDF to images" / "make a PDF from these PNGs".
  • "OCR this scanned PDF so it's searchable".

When NOT to use

  • Simple text extraction for reading — use os.fs.read_document (no install).
  • Editing PDF content/layout — out of scope; guide the user to a PDF editor.
  • Filling AcroForm fields programmatically — not covered on v1.

Common operations

All examples invoke os.shell.run. Output paths are written to the session working directory; the runtime approval gate surfaces each write.

Read the full file on GitHub · 92 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.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 92 lines · 56 tokens per session scan A d1e2f0cf7afd

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pdf is a skill published in the GitHub repository AtomicBot-ai/atomic-agent (2,438 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 1,013 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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