PDF Processing
Read, generate, merge, split, watermark, encrypt, and OCR PDF files directly through Claude
What it does & when to use it
This is Anthropic's own PDF-handling skill — the same implementation that powers Claude.ai's file capabilities. It packages a mature toolchain (pypdf, pdfplumber, reportlab, qpdf, pdftotext, pytesseract) into a playbook Claude can follow, covering the vast majority of everyday PDF operations.
Extracts text and tables from PDFs, including OCR on scanned documents; merges, splits, and rotates pages; generates new multi-page PDFs from scratch; adds watermarks, encrypts/decrypts, and password-protects existing PDFs; extracts embedded images; fills out PDF forms (with a dedicated FORMS.md for form-specific guidance). Both command-line tools (qpdf, pdftk, pdftotext, pdfimages) and Python libraries are covered, and Claude picks whichever fits the task.
- Merge several scanned contracts into one PDF and add a watermark
- OCR text and tables out of a scanned invoice (image-based PDF)
- Batch password-protect a folder of PDFs before distribution
- Generate a multi-page report PDF from scratch in Python, with headers/footers
- Auto-fill a PDF application form
Pros & cons
- Broad coverage — read/generate/edit/encrypt/OCR/forms are all handled with concrete examples
- Both CLI and Python code snippets are given directly, easy to copy and adapt
- Officially maintained and is literally the same implementation behind Claude.ai's file features, so behavior is predictable
- Licensed as Proprietary (source-available, not Apache/MIT) — you can reference it, but can't freely redistribute or repackage it commercially the way you could a community skill
- OCR relies on pytesseract + pdf2image; on low-quality scans, accuracy is limited by those tools, not something the skill itself fixes
- Complex PDF forms with nested or non-standard fields may still need manual fixing
How to install
Three options, pick whichever fits your setup:
- Claude Code: run
/plugin marketplace add anthropics/skills, then/plugin install document-skills@anthropic-agent-skills(this plugin bundles pdf, docx, pptx, and xlsx together) - Claude.ai: already enabled by default on paid plans, no install needed
- Claude API: upload the official skill (or your own) via the Skills API — see Anthropic's Skills API Quickstart docs
How to use
No manual trigger needed — just describe what you want done with a PDF in plain language and Claude picks up the skill automatically. For example: "Merge these three PDFs into one and rotate the first page 90 degrees," or "Extract the text from this scanned contract."
Compared to similar skills
Compared to hand-writing pypdf/pdfplumber code yourself, the value here is that the "which library for which task" judgment calls are already made (e.g. use pdfplumber, not pypdf, for table extraction; use qpdf for batch CLI operations), so Claude wastes less time trial-and-erroring. It ships alongside docx/pptx/xlsx in the same repo and packaging — install all four together if you need cross-format document handling.