pdf-reader - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: pdf-reader description: Analyze PDF files attached by the user. Activates automatically when user uploads a PDF. Handles both text-based and scanned/image-based PDFs using file_read's built-in PDF rendering. allowed-tools: file_read bash think

PDF Reader

Analyze PDF files using the file_read tool which natively supports PDF rendering.

How file_read handles PDFs

file_read with a .pdf path renders pages as images for vision analysis
Parameters: offset = start page (0-based), limit = max pages (default 5)
Each page is rendered at 144 DPI, resized to 1568px max dimension
Returns image blocks that you can analyze with vision

Workflow

Read the PDF: Call file_read with the PDF path. It will render pages as images automatically.
```
{"path": "/path/to/file.pdf"}
```
For multi-page PDFs: Read in batches using offset and limit.
```
{"path": "/path/to/file.pdf", "offset": 5, "limit": 5}
```
Analyze the content: The rendered pages come back as images. Describe what you see — text, tables, charts, forms, signatures, stamps, etc.

Extract text if needed: For text-heavy PDFs where you need exact content, use bash with python:

python3 -c "
import subprocess
subprocess.check_call(['pip3', 'install', 'pymupdf', '-q'])
import fitz
doc = fitz.open('/path/to/file.pdf')
for i, page in enumerate(doc):
    text = page.get_text()
    if text.strip():
        print(f'--- Page {i+1} ---')
        print(text)
"

Tips

Always start with file_read — it handles both scanned and text PDFs via vision
For scanned PDFs (image-based), vision analysis through file_read is the primary method
For text PDFs where exact character-level accuracy matters, supplement with python text extraction
When summarizing, note the total page count and which pages you've analyzed