pdf-poppler-utils_skill

Overview

This skill packages a set of PDF command-line utilities from poppler-utils for programmatic and manual PDF manipulation. It provides tools to inspect metadata, extract text and images, split and merge documents, manage attachments, verify signatures, and convert PDFs to images or HTML. Use it when you need reliable, scriptable PDF processing on macOS or in environments with poppler installed.

How this skill works

Each utility is a small command-line program that operates on PDF input and produces files, streams, or exit codes. Commands accept common options (passwords, help, version) and can read from stdin or write to stdout with '-' as the filename. Typical workflow: run pdfinfo to inspect a file, pdftotext to extract text, pdfimages to export embedded images, pdfseparate/pdfunite to split or merge pages, and pdftocairo/pdftoppm or pdftohtml to convert to other formats.

When to use it

• Extract searchable text from scanned PDFs or digital documents
• Batch-convert PDF pages to images for thumbnails or OCR preprocessing
• Split large PDFs into single pages or merge many PDFs into a single file
• Extract embedded images, fonts, metadata, or attachments for auditing or reuse
• Verify digital signatures and inspect document signing information
• Convert PDFs to HTML or raster formats for web display or legacy systems

Best practices

• Install poppler via your package manager and check for conflicting dependencies (Homebrew curl may conflict)
• Ask for human permission before running brew unlink curl; prefer using the system curl if issues arise
• Prefer streaming to stdout ('-') in pipelines to avoid temporary files when scripting
• Always check exit codes and handle password-protected PDFs with -opw or -upw options
• Use explicit DPI and output format options when converting to images to ensure consistent quality

Example use cases

• Create an automated pipeline that extracts text with pdftotext, then runs NLP processing on the output
• Generate 300 DPI PNG thumbnails from a collection of PDFs for a web gallery using pdftoppm
• Extract all embedded images from research papers with pdfimages for reuse in datasets
• Split an archive of scanned invoices into single-page PDFs with pdfseparate and then merge selected pages into monthly bundles with pdfunite
• Verify signatures on contracts using pdfsig before archiving