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The PDF skill equips Codex to work with PDF files at every stage: extracting text and structured content, generating new documents programmatically, editing existing files, and visually validating the final output. It uses reportlab for reliable PDF generation, pdfplumber and pypdf for extraction and inspection, and Poppler’s pdftoppm to render pages as PNGs for quality review. No OPENAI_API_KEY is required — this skill is entirely local.

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When to trigger this skill

This skill activates when you ask Codex to:
  • Read or review PDF content where layout and visual presentation matter
  • Extract text or data from an existing PDF (tables, paragraphs, form fields)
  • Create a new PDF programmatically with controlled typography and layout
  • Edit an existing PDF (add pages, modify content, fill forms)
  • Rotate, merge, or split PDF pages
  • Validate rendering before delivering a document to a user

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Supported operations

Text extraction

Use pdfplumber or pypdf to pull text, tables, and metadata. Note: extraction reflects text order, not visual layout fidelity.

PDF creation

Use reportlab to generate new documents with precise typography, spacing, margins, and section hierarchy.

Editing & manipulation

Use pypdf to merge documents, split pages, rotate pages, or copy pages across files.

Visual rendering

Use pdftoppm (Poppler) to render pages as PNGs and inspect layout, alignment, and legibility before delivery.

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Workflow

1

Prefer visual review first

Render PDF pages to PNGs with pdftoppm and inspect them before and after any changes. Do not rely solely on text extraction for layout fidelity.
2

Generate with reportlab

Use reportlab when creating new PDFs to get reliable, deterministic formatting output.
3

Extract with pdfplumber or pypdf

Use pdfplumber for text and table extraction. Use pypdf for structural operations (merge, split, rotate).
4

Re-render and verify

After each meaningful update, re-render pages and check alignment, spacing, and legibility.
5

Final quality check

Do not deliver until the latest PNG inspection shows zero visual or formatting defects.

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Installing

$skill-installer pdf
Restart Codex after installation to pick up the new skill.

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Dependencies

Install Python libraries: 
# Preferred (uv)
uv pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf

# Fallback
python3 -m pip install reportlab pdfplumber pypdf
Install Poppler (for pdftoppm rendering): 
# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install poppler

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt-get install -y poppler-utils
No OPENAI_API_KEY is required for this skill. All operations run locally using Python libraries and system tools.

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Rendering command

pdftoppm -png $INPUT_PDF $OUTPUT_PREFIX
This produces one PNG per page ($OUTPUT_PREFIX-1.png, $OUTPUT_PREFIX-2.png, …) for visual inspection.

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File conventions

PathPurpose
tmp/pdfs/Intermediate files during processing. Delete when done.
output/pdf/Final PDF artifacts ready for delivery.
Keep filenames stable and descriptive throughout the workflow.

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Quality standards

Codex applies these quality checks before delivering any PDF:
  • Typography: consistent fonts, sizes, and weights throughout
  • Spacing and margins: uniform padding and section separation
  • Tables and charts: sharp, aligned, clearly labeled
  • Text rendering: no clipped text, overlapping elements, black squares, or unreadable glyphs
  • Character encoding: ASCII hyphens only — avoid U+2011 (non-breaking hyphen) and other Unicode dashes
  • References and citations: human-readable — no tool tokens or placeholder strings
  • Headers, footers, and page numbers: polished and consistent across all pages
Do not deliver a PDF until the latest pdftoppm PNG inspection confirms zero visual defects. If Poppler is unavailable in the Codex environment, tell the user which tool is missing and ask them to review the output locally.

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Default prompt

Create, edit, or review this PDF and summarize the key output or changes.

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