Local PDF Index Builder

Build a searchable Asta document index from a collection of local PDF files. Each PDF is converted to markdown, split into ~2000-character chunks, and written as documents to an asta-documents YAML index — enabling semantic search across the full text of the collection.

Installation

This skill requires the asta CLI:

# Install/reinstall at the correct version
PLUGIN_VERSION=0.16.0
if [ "$(asta --version 2>/dev/null | grep -oE '[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+')" != "$PLUGIN_VERSION" ]; then
  uv tool install --force git+https://github.com/allenai/asta-plugins.git@v$PLUGIN_VERSION
fi

Prerequisites: Python 3.11+ and uv package manager