PDF Skill for Codex

Use when tasks involve reading, creating, or reviewing PDF files where rendering and layout matter; prefer visual checks by rendering pages (Poppler) and use Python tools such as `reportlab`, `pdfplumber`, and `pypdf` for generation and extraction.

4k tokens

context cost

the whole folder, loaded on every use

files

instructions only

copies elsewhere

how many repositories repackaged it

24488

stars on the repo

on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository

npx skills add https://github.com/openai/skills --skill pdf

What comes with it

12 307 bytes besides the instruction

LICENSE.txt

agents/openai.yaml

assets/pdf.png

The instruction itself

9 sections, as written by the author

PDF Skill

When to use

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

Workflow

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.
Use reportlab to generate PDFs when creating new documents.
Use pdfplumber (or pypdf) for text extraction and quick checks; do not rely on it for layout fidelity.
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.

Final checks

Do not deliver until the latest PNG inspection shows zero visual or formatting defects.
Confirm headers/footers, page numbering, and section transitions look polished.
Keep intermediate files organized or remove them after final approval.

Other skills for the same job

different authors, same section of the catalogue

DOCX

by anthropics

vendor ×16

Comprehensive document creation, editing, and analysis with support for tracked changes, comments, formatting preservation, and text extraction. When Claude needs to work with professional documents (.docx files) for: (1) Creating new documents, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with tracked changes, (4) Adding comments, or any other document tasks

Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. When Claude needs to fill in a PDF form or programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale.

Presentation creation, editing, and analysis. When Claude needs to work with presentations (.pptx files) for: (1) Creating new presentations, (2) Modifying or editing content, (3) Working with layouts, (4) Adding comments or speaker notes, or any other presentation tasks

Create beautiful visual art in .png and .pdf documents using design philosophy. You should use this skill when the user asks to create a poster, piece of art, design, or other static piece. Create original visual designs, never copying existing artists' work to avoid copyright violations.

Use this skill whenever the user wants to do anything with PDF files. This includes reading or extracting text/tables from PDFs, combining or merging multiple PDFs into one, splitting PDFs apart, rotating pages, adding watermarks, creating new PDFs, filling PDF forms, encrypting/decrypting PDFs, extracting images, and OCR on scanned PDFs to make them searchable. If the user mentions a .pdf file or asks to produce one, use this skill.

Use this skill whenever the user wants to create, read, edit, or manipulate Word documents (.docx files). Triggers include: any mention of 'Word doc', 'word document', '.docx', or requests to produce professional documents with formatting like tables of contents, headings, page numbers, or letterheads. Also use when extracting or reorganizing content from .docx files, inserting or replacing images in documents, performing find-and-replace in Word files, working with tracked changes or comments, or converting content into a polished Word document. If the user asks for a 'report', 'memo', 'letter', 'template', or similar deliverable as a Word or .docx file, use this skill. Do NOT use for PDFs, spreadsheets, Google Docs, or general coding tasks unrelated to document generation.

Use this skill any time a .pptx file is involved in any way — as input, output, or both. This includes: creating slide decks, pitch decks, or presentations; reading, parsing, or extracting text from any .pptx file (even if the extracted content will be used elsewhere, like in an email or summary); editing, modifying, or updating existing presentations; combining or splitting slide files; working with templates, layouts, speaker notes, or comments. Trigger whenever the user mentions \"deck,\" \"slides,\" \"presentation,\" or references a .pptx filename, regardless of what they plan to do with the content afterward. If a .pptx file needs to be opened, created, or touched, use this skill.

Create and edit Obsidian Flavored Markdown with wikilinks, embeds, callouts, properties, and other Obsidian-specific syntax. Use when working with .md files in Obsidian, or when the user mentions wikilinks, callouts, frontmatter, tags, embeds, or Obsidian notes.

3k tokens

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take openai/pdf from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.

Install what it needs

The instructions reference pip, uv, brew, apt. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.