Document PDF Skill — Quick Reference

This skill enables PDF creation, extraction, manipulation, and analysis. Claude should apply these patterns when users need to generate invoices, reports, extract data from PDFs, merge documents, or work with PDF forms.

Modern Best Practices (Jan 2026):

• PDF is a release artifact, not the editable source of truth.
• Validate export fidelity (fonts, images, links) and accessibility where required.
• Accessibility: if compliance matters, target a tagged/structured PDF workflow (often PDF/UA-aligned) and validate with tooling.
• EU distribution: EAA (June 2025) typically implies EN 301 549 expectations for customer-facing PDFs.
• Treat PDFs as sensitive: scrub metadata, ensure real redaction, and control distribution.

Core Decision Rules (2026)

• First decide: born-digital PDF (selectable text) vs scanned PDF (images). Scanned PDFs usually require OCR; see references/pdf-extraction-patterns.md.
• If the user needs accessibility/compliance, prefer generating from a source format that supports structure (DOCX/HTML + proper export) rather than “post-fixing” an untagged PDF.
• For deterministic ops (merge/split/rotate/scrub), prefer scripts/ helpers over re-implementing ad hoc.
• Never treat black rectangles or overlays as redaction; use real redaction and verify by copy/paste + search.