Pdf Rename

Rename academic PDF papers to a standardized format "[Year] [Venue] Title.pdf" using a three-stage pipeline (Extract → Verify → Rename). Use when the user asks to organize, batch-rename, or metadata-enrich PDF files in a folder. Activates on keywords like "rename PDFs", "organize papers", "batch rename PDFs", "rename papers by metadata", "pdf重命名", "文献整理".

PDF Rename — Academic Paper Organizer

Rename academic PDFs to: [Year] [Venue] Title.pdf

Three-stage pipeline (strict order):

Extract → Verify → Rename

Anti-error principle: Never re-parse PDF content during Rename stage. The Manifest is the single source of truth.

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Quick Start

# Stage 1: Extract metadata → generate manifest
python scripts/extract.py "<folder_path>"

# Stage 2: Verify (manual or web search), then inject verified data
#   → Edit scripts/VERIFIED_DATA dict with web-verified values
python scripts/apply_verified.py "<folder_path>"

# Stage 3: Preview rename plan
python scripts/execute.py "<folder_path>" --preview

# Execute rename (with backup)
python scripts/execute.py "<folder_path>" --execute

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Workflow Details

Stage 1: Extract

scripts/extract.py reads every PDF in the folder and generates manifest.json.

For each PDF it extracts:

• Title: from PDF first-page text (heuristic: first non-metadata line)
• Year: from filename prefix (most reliable) or PDF text (conference-year pattern)
• Venue: inferred from PDF text (NeurIPS, ICML, arXiv, etc.)
• Status: needs_verification (title/year from auto-extraction)

Manifest schema — see references/manifest_spec.md

⚠️ PDF text extraction is unreliable for titles. Expected quality: filename > PDF text for title. Always verify with web search before executing rename.

Stage 2: Verify

Before running rename, manually or via web search verify:

1. Title is correct (filename is often sufficient, but multi-word titles may differ)
2. Year is correct (arXiv submission year ≠ conference year)
3. Venue is correct

Inject verified data via scripts/apply_verified.py:

• Key = original filename (exact match)
• Value = {'title', 'year', 'venue', 'confirmed': True}

Set confirmed: False or omit entry for files to skip.

Stage 3: Rename

scripts/execute.py reads manifest and renames files:

• Status must be ready to execute
• Duplicate titles → append (1), (2), etc.
• Files with status needs_verification or manual_review are skipped
• Backup is created automatically at <folder>/_backup_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS/

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Key Design Decisions

Problem	Solution
PDF title extraction garbled/incomplete	Use filename as primary title source; PDF text only for venue/year hints
Wrong year from arXiv ID vs conference year	Verify with web search; inject corrected year in VERIFIED_DATA
Duplicate papers (same content, different filenames)	Detect via title similarity; rename both with (1), (2) suffixes
Accidental data loss	Always create timestamped backup before renaming

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Scripts

Script	Purpose
scripts/extract.py	Stage 1: extract PDF metadata → manifest.json
scripts/apply_verified.py	Stage 2: inject verified data into manifest
scripts/execute.py	Stage 3: rename files from manifest (preview or execute)
scripts/find_duplicates.py	Utility: detect near-duplicate titles in manifest

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References

• references/manifest_spec.md — Full manifest JSON schema
• references/venue_abbrev.md — Standard venue abbreviation map
• references/anti_patterns.md — Common mistakes and how to avoid them