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breakcafebreakcafe/picoclaw/.claude/skills/add-pdf-reader/SKILL.md

add-pdf-reader

Skill1 starsChanged 8 months agoMITView on GitHub

Add PDF reading to NanoClaw agents. Extracts text from PDFs via pdftotext CLI. Handles WhatsApp attachments, URLs, and local files.

The file

We split this skill into the rules it gives an agent

5 rules. About 0 are common, 1 is distinctive, and 4 are very specific to this project.

  • ≈0

    Common · estimate

    Many files like this have a rule of this kind.

  • ≈1

    Distinctive · estimate

    This author's own choices. Worth a look.

  • 4

    Very specific

    Tied to their project's names, files or tools. Probably skip.

  • Common
  • Distinctive
  • Very specific
  1. Very specific:

    Read .nanoclaw/state.yaml.

    line 14
  2. Very specific:

    If .nanoclaw/ directory doesn't exist:

    line 20
  3. Distinctive:

    If merge conflicts occur, read the intent files:

    line 40
  4. Very specific:

    Ask the agent to read a PDF from a URL.

    line 76
  5. Very specific:

    Verify the message has documentMessage with mimetype: application/pdf.

    line 100

≈ “Common” is an estimate: at least 1 in 5 of the 350,495 skill files we read have a rule of the same kind, not the same words. “Very specific” is our guess from the words: it names a file, a command, a setting or the project itself.

Keep what fits and drop the rest. Your version, ready for your agents.
Files
SKILL.md

Add PDF Reader

Adds PDF reading capability to all container agents using poppler-utils (pdftotext/pdfinfo). PDFs sent as WhatsApp attachments are auto-downloaded to the group workspace.

Phase 1: Pre-flight

Check if already applied

Read .nanoclaw/state.yaml. If add-pdf-reader is in applied_skills, skip to Phase 3 (Verify).

Phase 2: Apply Code Changes

Initialize skills system (if needed)

If .nanoclaw/ directory doesn't exist:

npx tsx scripts/apply-skill.ts --init

Apply the skill

npx tsx scripts/apply-skill.ts .claude/skills/add-pdf-reader

This deterministically:

  • Adds container/skills/pdf-reader/SKILL.md (agent-facing documentation)
  • Adds container/skills/pdf-reader/pdf-reader (CLI script)
  • Three-way merges poppler-utils + COPY into container/Dockerfile
  • Three-way merges PDF attachment download into src/channels/whatsapp.ts
  • Three-way merges PDF tests into src/channels/whatsapp.test.ts
  • Records application in .nanoclaw/state.yaml

If merge conflicts occur, read the intent files:

  • modify/container/Dockerfile.intent.md
  • modify/src/channels/whatsapp.ts.intent.md
  • modify/src/channels/whatsapp.test.ts.intent.md

Validate

npm test
npm run build

Rebuild container

./container/build.sh

Restart service

launchctl kickstart -k gui/$(id -u)/com.nanoclaw  # macOS
# Linux: systemctl --user restart nanoclaw

Phase 3: Verify

Test PDF extraction

Send a PDF file in any registered WhatsApp chat. The agent should:

  1. Download the PDF to attachments/
  2. Respond acknowledging the PDF
  3. Be able to extract text when asked

Test URL fetching

Ask the agent to read a PDF from a URL. It should use pdf-reader fetch <url>.

Check logs if needed

tail -f logs/nanoclaw.log | grep -i pdf

Look for:

  • Downloaded PDF attachment — successful download
  • Failed to download PDF attachment — media download issue

Troubleshooting

Agent says pdf-reader command not found

Container needs rebuilding. Run ./container/build.sh and restart the service.

PDF text extraction is empty

The PDF may be scanned (image-based). pdftotext only handles text-based PDFs. Consider using the agent-browser to open the PDF visually instead.

WhatsApp PDF not detected

Verify the message has documentMessage with mimetype: application/pdf. Some file-sharing apps send PDFs as generic files without the correct mimetype.

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