Read, create, merge, split, and manipulate PDF files. Extract text and tables, fill forms, add watermarks, and OCR scanned documents.
What it does
PDF is a binary format. Claude can write Python code that claims to generate a PDF, but without knowing the specific library APIs and their edge cases, the code frequently produces malformed output, fails on non-ASCII characters, or generates files that open incorrectly in certain readers. This skill loads the correct patterns for reading, creating, merging, splitting, and manipulating PDFs — including text extraction, form filling, OCR for scanned documents, and watermarking — using libraries Claude can actually call.
Use case
Workflows that produce or consume PDF documents: generating client reports, extracting data from invoices, merging documents, or automating document pipelines. Made by Anthropic.
"Read this invoice PDF and extract the line items as a structured JSON object." "Generate a PDF report from this data with a header, summary, and appendix." "Merge these three PDFs in order and add sequential page numbers." "Extract all text from this scanned document using OCR." "Add a CONFIDENTIAL watermark to every page of this document."
Provide a file path for existing PDFs, or describe the document you want to create.
For extraction: Claude reads the file and returns structured data — text, tables, or specific fields.
For creation: describe content and layout. Claude generates the file, not just the code to generate it.
Input
A PDF file path, a description of the document you want to create, or structured data to format as a PDF.
Output
Extracted text or structured data from existing PDFs, or newly generated PDF files with correct formatting. Scanned documents processed via OCR return searchable text with confidence scores for ambiguous regions.
npx skillsadd anthropics/skills/pdf
npx skillsadd anthropics/skills/pdf
Requires skills.sh CLI
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