Memento-Skills pdf

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.

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/Memento-Teams/Memento-Skills

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/Memento-Teams/Memento-Skills "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/builtin/skills/pdf" ~/.claude/skills/memento-teams-memento-skills-pdf && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: builtin/skills/pdf/SKILL.md

source content

PDF Skill — Action Routing

CRITICAL: Decide Your Action FIRST

Before doing anything, classify the user's request and follow the MANDATORY action:

User wants to...	MANDATORY action
Convert .md to .pdf / Generate PDF from markdown / 把 md 转成 pdf	MUST use `bash` to run `md_to_pdf.py` script (see below)
Create a new PDF from scratch	Use `bash` to run a Python script with reportlab
Read/extract text from a PDF	Use `read_file` or `bash` with pdfplumber
Merge/split/rotate/encrypt PDFs	Use `bash` with pypdf
Extract tables from a PDF	Use `bash` with pdfplumber
Fill a PDF form	Read FORMS.md first

Markdown → PDF Conversion (MOST COMMON)

ALWAYS use the

bash

tool to run the built-in script. NEVER use
read_file
for this task.

bash: python <absolute_path_to_skill>/scripts/md_to_pdf.py <input.md> <output.pdf>

The script path will be listed under "Available Scripts" in the prompt. Use that absolute path directly.

Example:

bash: python /path/to/skills/pdf/scripts/md_to_pdf.py /workspace/report.md /workspace/report.pdf

Features: CJK support, headings, lists, code blocks, tables, bold/italic, blockquotes, horizontal rules.

If reportlab is not installed:

bash: pip install reportlab

Reading/Extracting from Existing PDFs

Extract text

import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        print(page.extract_text())

Extract tables

with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
    for page in pdf.pages:
        for table in page.extract_tables():
            for row in table:
                print(row)

Merge / Split / Rotate

Merge

from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader
writer = PdfWriter()
for f in ["a.pdf", "b.pdf"]:
    for page in PdfReader(f).pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as out:
    writer.write(out)

Split

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
    w = PdfWriter()
    w.add_page(page)
    with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as out:
        w.write(out)

Rotate

reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90)
writer.add_page(page)
with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as out:
    writer.write(out)

Password Protection

from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
for page in reader.pages:
    writer.add_page(page)
writer.encrypt("userpassword", "ownerpassword")
with open("encrypted.pdf", "wb") as out:
    writer.write(out)

Create PDF from Scratch (reportlab)

from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.platypus import SimpleDocTemplate, Paragraph, Spacer
from reportlab.lib.styles import getSampleStyleSheet

doc = SimpleDocTemplate("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
styles = getSampleStyleSheet()
story = [Paragraph("Title", styles['Title']), Spacer(1, 12), Paragraph("Body text", styles['Normal'])]
doc.build(story)

IMPORTANT: Never use Unicode subscript/superscript characters in ReportLab. Use

<sub>

and

<super>

tags instead.

Quick Reference

Task	Tool	Method
Markdown → PDF	bash + md_to_pdf.py	`python scripts/md_to_pdf.py in.md out.pdf`
Extract text	pdfplumber	`page.extract_text()`
Extract tables	pdfplumber	`page.extract_tables()`
Merge/split/rotate	pypdf	PdfReader + PdfWriter
Create from scratch	reportlab	SimpleDocTemplate
Fill forms	see FORMS.md	—
OCR scanned	pytesseract + pdf2image	Convert to image first

References

FORMS.md — PDF form filling
REFERENCE.md — Advanced features, JS libraries, troubleshooting