pdf

pdf is a skill for Codex from PracticalSwan/agent-skills. It costs 56 tokens per session (1,209 once invoked), scanned B, original, MIT.

A workflow for reading, creating, extracting content from, and reviewing PDF files, including checks of their visual layout.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect PDFs, extract text, generate PDFs with code, and render pages for visual verification.
Why use it?
It helps catch problems that plain text extraction can miss, such as broken spacing, alignment, or unreadable pages.

Skill for Codex

Written for Codex: reads ~/.codex or $CODEX_HOME. Also seen: mentions subagents; mentions Claude Code; mentions Codex.

Good fit Use it to inspect PDFs, extract text, generate PDFs with code, and render pages for visual verification.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf
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 PracticalSwan/agent-skills --skill pdf
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/PracticalSwan/agent-skills

Made for: 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

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf/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

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/practicalswan/agent-skills/pdf.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 56 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,209 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 $0.00056 $0.01209
Opus 5 $0.00028 $0.00605
Sonnet 5 $0.00011 $0.00242
Haiku 4.5 $0.00006 $0.00121

Measured 3d ago against content hash 94ad8a39ca6f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-10, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

pdf scanned grade B 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 3d 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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils
pdf/SKILL.md · 125 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 125 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

PDF Skill

Tech Stack Target / Version: PDF extraction, OCR-capable tooling, conversion scripts, and Acrobat-compatible review workflows.

  • Leverage native parallel subagent dispatch and 200k+ context windows where available.

When to use

Use symptom -> action triggers: when one matches, apply this skill and verify with the protocol below.

  • Read or review PDF content where layout and visuals matter.
  • Create PDFs programmatically with reliable formatting.
  • Validate final rendering before delivery.

Workflow

  1. Prefer visual review: render PDF pages to PNGs and inspect them.
    • Use pdftoppm if available.
    • If unavailable, install Poppler or ask the user to review the output locally.
  2. Use reportlab to generate PDFs when creating new documents.
  3. Use pdfplumber (or pypdf) for text extraction and quick checks; do not rely on it for layout fidelity.
  4. After each meaningful update, re-render pages and verify alignment, spacing, and legibility.

Temp and output conventions

  • Use tmp/pdfs/ for intermediate files; delete when done.
  • Write final artifacts under output/pdf/ when working in this repo.
  • Keep filenames stable and descriptive.

Dependencies (install if missing)

Prefer uv for dependency management.

Python packages:

uv pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf

If uv is unavailable:

python3 -m pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf

System tools (for rendering):

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install poppler

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils

If installation isn't possible in this environment, tell the user which dependency is missing and how to install it locally.

Environment

No required environment variables.

Rendering command

pdftoppm -png $INPUT_PDF $OUTPUT_PREFIX

Quality expectations

  • Maintain polished visual design: consistent typography, spacing, margins, and section hierarchy.
  • Avoid rendering issues: clipped text, overlapping elements, broken tables, black squares, or unreadable glyphs.
  • Charts, tables, and images must be sharp, aligned, and clearly labeled.
  • Use ASCII hyphens only. Avoid U+2011 (non-breaking hyphen) and other Unicode dashes.
  • Citations and references must be human-readable; never leave tool tokens or placeholder strings.

Read the full file on GitHub · 125 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. 3d ago Changed · -1 lines 94ad8a39ca6f
  2. 4d ago Changed b90014a36c03
  3. 7d ago First seen · 126 lines · 56 tokens per session scan B 434cebd9d05a

Subscribe to this mod's changes

pdf is a skill published in the GitHub repository PracticalSwan/agent-skills (14 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 56 tokens to every session and 1,209 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.