Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for extracting text and tables, creating new PDFs, merging/splitting documents, and handling forms. When Claude needs to fill in a PDF form or programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale.
81
76%
Does it follow best practices?
Impact
85%
3.69xAverage score across 3 eval scenarios
Risky
Do not use without reviewing
Optimize this skill with Tessl
npx tessl skill review --optimize ./plugins/all-skills/skills/pdf/SKILL.mdQuality
Discovery
100%Based on the skill's description, can an agent find and select it at the right time? Clear, specific descriptions lead to better discovery.
This is a strong skill description that clearly enumerates specific PDF manipulation capabilities and provides an explicit 'when' clause for triggering. It uses third-person voice appropriately and includes natural trigger terms users would use. The description is concise yet comprehensive, covering both the breadth of capabilities and the conditions under which the skill should be selected.
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Specificity | Lists multiple specific concrete actions: 'extracting text and tables', 'creating new PDFs', 'merging/splitting documents', and 'handling forms'. These are clear, actionable capabilities. | 3 / 3 |
Completeness | Clearly answers both 'what' (extracting text/tables, creating PDFs, merging/splitting, handling forms) and 'when' ('When Claude needs to fill in a PDF form or programmatically process, generate, or analyze PDF documents at scale'). The 'when' clause is explicit. | 3 / 3 |
Trigger Term Quality | Includes strong natural keywords users would say: 'PDF', 'text', 'tables', 'merging', 'splitting', 'form', 'fill in a PDF form', 'generate', 'analyze PDF documents'. Good coverage of common variations and use cases. | 3 / 3 |
Distinctiveness Conflict Risk | Clearly scoped to PDF manipulation with distinct triggers like 'PDF form', 'merging/splitting documents', 'PDF documents'. Unlikely to conflict with other document-type skills due to the specific PDF focus and enumerated capabilities. | 3 / 3 |
Total | 12 / 12 Passed |
Implementation
52%Reviews the quality of instructions and guidance provided to agents. Good implementation is clear, handles edge cases, and produces reliable results.
The skill provides excellent actionable, executable code examples across multiple PDF libraries and CLI tools, making it strong on actionability. However, it lacks workflow validation steps for multi-step or batch operations (merge, split, watermark), and the main file is overly long with content that would be better placed in referenced files. The content could be more concise by moving detailed examples to reference.md and keeping only the most common patterns inline.
Suggestions
Add validation/verification steps to multi-step operations (e.g., after merging, verify page count matches expected total; after encryption, verify the file opens with the password)
Move detailed library-specific examples (reportlab multi-page, advanced table extraction, OCR) to reference.md and keep only the most common 1-2 patterns per library in the main skill
Add error handling guidance for common failure modes (e.g., corrupted PDFs, password-protected files, missing dependencies) as part of workflow checkpoints
| Dimension | Reasoning | Score |
|---|---|---|
Conciseness | The content is fairly comprehensive but includes some redundancy (e.g., multiple similar merge/split examples across pypdf and CLI tools) and could be tightened. Some sections like the quick reference table partially duplicate what's already shown in code examples. However, it doesn't over-explain basic concepts. | 2 / 3 |
Actionability | All code examples are fully executable, copy-paste ready Python and bash commands. Each task has concrete, complete code with imports, file operations, and output handling. No pseudocode or vague instructions. | 3 / 3 |
Workflow Clarity | There are no multi-step workflows with validation checkpoints. Operations like merging, watermarking, and encryption are presented as isolated snippets without any verification steps (e.g., checking output file validity, confirming page counts after merge, validating encrypted PDFs). For batch/destructive operations like merging and splitting, this lack of validation is a significant gap. | 1 / 3 |
Progressive Disclosure | References to forms.md and reference.md are present and clearly signaled at the end, which is good. However, the main file is quite long (~200+ lines of inline code examples) and much of the detailed library-specific content (reportlab multi-page, advanced table extraction, OCR) could be split into reference files. The content that should be separate is inline. | 2 / 3 |
Total | 8 / 12 Passed |
Validation
90%Checks the skill against the spec for correct structure and formatting. All validation checks must pass before discovery and implementation can be scored.
Validation — 10 / 11 Passed
Validation for skill structure
| Criteria | Description | Result |
|---|---|---|
frontmatter_unknown_keys | Unknown frontmatter key(s) found; consider removing or moving to metadata | Warning |
Total | 10 / 11 Passed | |
- Repository
- davepoon/buildwithclaude
- Commit
7cc63f3
- Reviewed
Table of Contents
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