Effective LiteParse

Extract text from documents locally with the lit CLI — a fast, model-free parser. This skill is about using it cheaply: each lit parse re-runs full extraction, and every line you dump into the conversation is paid for on every subsequent turn. The patterns below come from analyzing real agent traces where the same PDF was parsed up to 9 times and single image reads cost 140k+ characters of context. Don't repeat those mistakes.

The golden rule: parse ONCE to a file, then search the file

lit parse re-extracts the whole document every time you call it. Re-parsing per search is the #1 waste seen in traces. Parse a document exactly once, to a temp file, then run all your searches against that file:

# ONE TIME, per document. --no-ocr for born-digital PDFs (almost all reports) — much faster.
lit parse "/abs/path/doc.pdf" --format text --no-ocr -o /tmp/doc.txt && wc -l /tmp/doc.txt