Install
openclaw skills install evolink-pdfPdf Toolkit
Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. Powered by evolink.ai
PDF Toolkit
Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms.
Powered by Evolink.ai
When to Use
Use this skill when you need to:
- Extract text or tables from PDF documents
- Merge multiple PDFs into one
- Split a PDF into separate pages
- Create new PDFs programmatically
- Fill out PDF forms
- Add watermarks or rotate pages
- Extract metadata or images from PDFs
Usage
This is an instruction-only skill. Claude will use the Python libraries and command-line tools described below to perform PDF operations.
⚠️ Prerequisites: Before performing any task, Claude should verify if the required Python libraries are installed. If missing, guide the user to run:
pip install pypdf pdfplumber reportlab pytesseract pdf2image
Python Libraries
pypdf - Basic operations (merge, split, rotate, encrypt) pdfplumber - Text and table extraction with layout preservation reportlab - Create PDFs from scratch pytesseract + pdf2image - OCR for scanned PDFs
Command-Line Tools
pdftotext (poppler-utils) - Extract text qpdf - Merge, split, rotate, decrypt pdftk - Alternative PDF manipulation tool
Configuration
EvoLink API (Optional)
For AI-powered PDF analysis and processing, set your EvoLink API key:
export EVOLINK_API_KEY="your-key-here"
Default model: claude-opus-4-6 (no configuration needed).
To use a different model:
export EVOLINK_MODEL="claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929"
For other available models, see the documentation. 👉 Get free API key
Python Libraries
This skill provides instructions for using standard Python PDF libraries. No additional configuration required for basic operations.
Example
Extract Text from PDF
from pypdf import PdfReader
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
text = ""
for page in reader.pages:
text += page.extract_text()
print(text)
Merge Multiple PDFs
from pypdf import PdfWriter, PdfReader
writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf_file in ["doc1.pdf", "doc2.pdf", "doc3.pdf"]:
reader = PdfReader(pdf_file)
for page in reader.pages:
writer.add_page(page)
with open("merged.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Extract Tables
import pdfplumber
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
for page in pdf.pages:
tables = page.extract_tables()
for table in tables:
print(table)
Create New PDF
from reportlab.lib.pagesizes import letter
from reportlab.pdfgen import canvas
c = canvas.Canvas("output.pdf", pagesize=letter)
c.drawString(100, 750, "Hello World!")
c.save()
Common Operations
Split PDF into Pages
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(reader.pages):
writer = PdfWriter()
writer.add_page(page)
with open(f"page_{i+1}.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Rotate Pages
from pypdf import PdfReader, PdfWriter
reader = PdfReader("input.pdf")
writer = PdfWriter()
page = reader.pages[0]
page.rotate(90) # Rotate 90 degrees clockwise
writer.add_page(page)
with open("rotated.pdf", "wb") as output:
writer.write(output)
Extract Metadata
from pypdf import PdfReader
reader = PdfReader("document.pdf")
meta = reader.metadata
print(f"Title: {meta.title}")
print(f"Author: {meta.author}")
print(f"Subject: {meta.subject}")
Add 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 output:
writer.write(output)
Extract Tables to Excel
import pdfplumber
import pandas as pd
with pdfplumber.open("document.pdf") as pdf:
all_tables = []
for page in pdf.pages:
tables = page.extract_tables()
for table in tables:
if table:
df = pd.DataFrame(table[1:], columns=table[0])
all_tables.append(df)
if all_tables:
combined_df = pd.concat(all_tables, ignore_index=True)
combined_df.to_excel("output.xlsx", index=False)
OCR Scanned PDFs
import pytesseract
from pdf2image import convert_from_path
images = convert_from_path('scanned.pdf')
text = ""
for i, image in enumerate(images):
text += f"Page {i+1}:\n"
text += pytesseract.image_to_string(image)
text += "\n\n"
print(text)
Command-Line Examples
# Extract text preserving layout
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt
# Merge PDFs
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf -- merged.pdf
# Split specific pages
qpdf input.pdf --pages . 1-5 -- pages1-5.pdf
# Remove password
qpdf --password=mypassword --decrypt encrypted.pdf decrypted.pdf
# Extract images
pdfimages -j input.pdf output_prefix
Quick Reference
| Task | Best Tool | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Extract text | pdfplumber | page.extract_text() |
| Extract tables | pdfplumber | page.extract_tables() |
| Merge PDFs | pypdf | writer.add_page(page) |
| Split PDFs | pypdf | One page per file |
| Create PDFs | reportlab | Canvas or Platypus |
| OCR scanned PDFs | pytesseract | Convert to image first |
| Command line merge | qpdf | qpdf --empty --pages ... |
| Fill forms | pypdf | See form filling examples |
Security
Credentials & Network
This skill does not require API keys or make network requests. All operations are performed locally using Python libraries.
File Access
This skill provides instructions for reading and writing PDF files. Claude will only access files you explicitly specify.
Network Access
This skill does not make network requests.
Persistence & Privilege
This skill does not modify other skills or system settings. It only provides instructions for PDF manipulation.