How do I install the Readable PDF skill?

Run npx skillmds@latest add yamadashy/readable-pdf in your terminal (requires Node.js), paste this page's agent-chat prompt into Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-connected agent, or download the SKILL.md file and copy it into your agent's skills directory.

Is Readable PDF safe to use?

This skill has not completed SkillMD's automated safety review yet. SkillMD never runs a skill's scripts for you; review the SKILL.md before installing.

Which AI agents work with Readable PDF?

This skill is tagged as working with Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex. SKILL.md is an open format, so most agents that read a skills directory can load it too.

Is Readable PDF free to use?

Yes. Installing skills from SkillMD is free, and the skill stays under its author's original license.

Who published Readable PDF?

yamadashy (@yamadashy) published this skill. Their other Agent Skills are listed on their SkillMD profile.

Readable PDF by yamadashy — Agent Skill

Name: Readable PDF
Author: yamadashy

Readable PDF

Extracts text (with original line breaks), metadata, per-page character / image density, and optional rendered PNGs from a PDF using pdfvision. Falls back to --render on pages whose density Overview shows low text coverage so multimodal models can read raster slides. Use when the URL ends in .pdf, the user supplies a local PDF path, or another readable-* skill produced a PDF that still needs structured extraction.

yamadashy 04a6594 2.3 KB Updated Sep 17, 2026

File contents

PDF Reader

Uses pdfvision for cross-agent PDF extraction. pdfvision returns text with line breaks preserved, document metadata, per-page density, and optional rendered PNGs for multimodal models.

Prerequisite

npx pdfvision --version

Or install globally: npm install -g pdfvision. Requires Node.js >= 22.13.

Run npx pdfvision --help once before invoking — the flag set evolves (page selection, render output dir, layout / geometry / image-boxes opt-ins, etc.) and the help text is the source of truth for what the installed version supports.

Steps

1. Get a local PDF path

If the input is a URL, download first:

curl -L -o /tmp/doc.pdf "{URL}"

If the input is already a local path, skip this step.

2. Extract text + metadata

npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf

Default output is markdown with one ## Page N section per page and a density Overview at the top.

3. Switch format when needed

# Structured JSON for downstream programmatic use
npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -f json

# Tag-shaped XML, easier for some LLMs to parse than JSON
npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -f xml

4. Render pages for multimodal review

If the Overview shows low character coverage on a page (i.e. the page is largely an image / scan), render PNGs and read them:

npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf --render -p {pages}

The output reports the PNG paths. Read each image with the agent's image-reading capability.

5. Page subsets

npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -p 1-5
npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -p 1,3,5

Why pdfvision over a built-in PDF reader

Works in any agent runtime that can spawn a CLI, not only Claude Code.
Reports per-page density so the agent can detect rasterised pages and re-extract with --render.
Caches by content hash, so repeated reads of the same PDF are instant.

---name: readable-pdfdescription: Extracts text (with original line breaks), metadata, per-page character / image density, and optional rendered PNGs from a PDF using pdfvision. Falls back to --render on pages whose density Overview shows low text coverage so multimodal models can read raster slides. Use when the URL ends in .pdf, the user supplies a local PDF path, or another readable-* skill produced a PDF that still needs structured extraction.---# PDF ReaderUses [pdfvision](https://github.com/yamadashy/pdfvision) for cross-agent PDF extraction. pdfvision returns text with line breaks preserved, document metadata, per-page density, and optional rendered PNGs for multimodal models.## Prerequisite```bashnpx pdfvision --version```Or install globally: `npm install -g pdfvision`. Requires Node.js >= 22.13.Run `npx pdfvision --help` once before invoking — the flag set evolves (page selection, render output dir, layout / geometry / image-boxes opt-ins, etc.) and the help text is the source of truth for what the installed version supports.## Steps### 1. Get a local PDF pathIf the input is a URL, download first:```bashcurl -L -o /tmp/doc.pdf "{URL}"```If the input is already a local path, skip this step.### 2. Extract text + metadata```bashnpx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf```Default output is `markdown` with one `## Page N` section per page and a density Overview at the top.### 3. Switch format when needed```bash# Structured JSON for downstream programmatic usenpx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -f json# Tag-shaped XML, easier for some LLMs to parse than JSONnpx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -f xml```### 4. Render pages for multimodal reviewIf the Overview shows low character coverage on a page (i.e. the page is largely an image / scan), render PNGs and read them:```bashnpx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf --render -p {pages}```The output reports the PNG paths. Read each image with the agent's image-reading capability.### 5. Page subsets```bashnpx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -p 1-5npx pdfvision /tmp/doc.pdf -p 1,3,5```## Why pdfvision over a built-in PDF reader- Works in any agent runtime that can spawn a CLI, not only Claude Code.- Reports per-page density so the agent can detect rasterised pages and re-extract with `--render`.- Caches by content hash, so repeated reads of the same PDF are instant.

Frequently asked questions