pdf-extract-shell-first

pdf-extract-shell-first is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from HKUDS/OpenSpace. It costs 22 tokens per session (2,539 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for extracting text from PDF files by trying a shell tool first and using Python as a fallback.

In plain words
What is it for?
It helps extract text from PDFs stored locally or downloaded from web addresses.
Why use it?
PDF readers may return unusable binary data or fail in restricted environments. The ordered attempts give you another way to get the text.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one. Also seen: positional $N argument.

Good fit It helps extract text from PDFs stored locally or downloaded from web addresses.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c
About the project

OpenSpace is a skill-management layer for AI agents that stores, retrieves, evaluates, shares, and improves reusable workflows. It is intended for people using multiple coding agents who want skills to be reused and refined based on task outcomes. The catalogue provides 200 skills for use with OpenSpace and the agents it supports.

HKUDS/OpenSpace · 7,552 stars · on GitHub

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.

Any agent
npx skills add HKUDS/OpenSpace --skill pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/HKUDS/OpenSpace

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

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.

agentmods badge for pdf-extract-shell-first

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c/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.

agentmods 80×15 button for pdf-extract-shell-first

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/hkuds/openspace/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 22 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,539 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00022 $0.02539
Opus 5 $0.00011 $0.01269
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00508
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00254

Measured 6d ago against content hash 2fc43bca9e54, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-09, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

pdf-extract-shell-first 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 6d 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.

Makes network callslowCapability

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

curl -L -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" -o target.pdf "URL_HERE"
benchmarks/gdpval/skills/pdf-download-extract-fallback-enhanced-e27e0c/SKILL.md · 307 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 307 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PDF Extract with Shell-First Tool Cascade

This skill provides an optimized workflow for extracting text content from PDF documents (local files or downloaded URLs) using a prioritized tool cascade that favors shell-based extraction before falling back to Python libraries.

Why Shell-First?

Analysis of execution patterns shows:

  • read_file on PDFs sometimes returns binary/image data instead of text
  • run_shell with pdftotext has higher success rate and fewer sandbox errors
  • execute_code_sandbox can fail with "unknown error" in constrained environments
  • Shell tools are more reliable for PDF text extraction when available

Entry Point: Determine Your Starting Point

Before beginning, identify your scenario:

Scenario Start Here Skip
PDF already on local disk Step 1 (Try read_file) Shell download steps
PDF at a web URL Shell download, then Step 1 None
Need maximum reliability Full cascade (all 3 tools) None

Complete Workflow

Step 0: Download PDF (URL Only)

If your PDF is at a web URL, download it first using browser user-agent:

curl -L -A "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/120.0.0.0 Safari/537.36" -o target.pdf "URL_HERE"

Key flags:

  • -L: Follow redirects
  • -A: Set user-agent header to mimic a real browser
  • -o: Specify output filename

If you already have the PDF locally, skip to Step 1.

Step 1: Try read_file (Primary Attempt)

First, attempt to extract text using the read_file tool:

read_file(filetype="pdf", file_path="target.pdf")

Evaluate the response:

Response Type Interpretation Next Action
Clean readable text Success Proceed to content analysis
Binary data / PNG image / garbled read_file returned raw data Go to Step 2 immediately
Error / timeout Tool failure Go to Step 2 immediately

Critical: If read_file returns binary image data or garbled content, do not retry read_file. Immediately proceed to Step 2.

Read the full file on GitHub · 307 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. 6d ago First seen · 307 lines · 22 tokens per session scan A 2fc43bca9e54

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pdf-extract-shell-first is a skill published in the GitHub repository HKUDS/OpenSpace (7,552 stars, last pushed 28d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 22 tokens to every session and 2,539 once invoked, about $0.0001 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 2026-09-03.

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