Design PDF

Design the reading experience and verify the exported pages. Use the client's PDF rendering and inspection capability, and use its editable-document capability when a Word source is requested. Load dedicated format skills when available. Keep the original source untouched unless the user requests an in-place edit.

Resolve every bundled relative path from the directory containing this SKILL.md; never interpret references/... or scripts/... from the user's project directory.

Choose the production route

• Editorial guide, report, workbook, or text-led document: use a reflow-capable source such as DOCX or structured HTML/CSS when it improves editing and pagination. Export to PDF only after source layout is stable.
• Designed fixed-layout guide or compact report: use structured HTML/CSS, SVG, or ReportLab with reusable page, frame, and type helpers. Avoid one-off coordinates scattered through the implementation.
• Poster, cover, or art-forward single page: use vector-first composition or a high-resolution raster workflow, with text kept editable until export.
• Existing PDF: inspect every page first. Rebuild only the pages that cannot be edited reliably, and disclose any loss of editability.

Required workflow

1. Set the contract. Establish page size, orientation, digital or print use, binding, bleed, live area, page count or range, color expectations, accessibility, and editable-source requirement.
2. Edit the content. Create a hierarchy and page architecture before visual production. Split dense material; do not shrink type to rescue a failed page plan.
3. Define the editorial system. Read editorial-system.md and typography casting. Inventory the available font library and lock theme-matched type roles, column/grid rules, margins, baseline rhythm, image treatment, recurring folio/header treatment, and section pacing.
4. Build bounded layouts. Use explicit frames, measured text, and reusable components. Reserve space for captions, citations, headers, footers, and page numbers before filling the body.
5. Art-direct visuals. Give each image, chart, pull quote, or shape a communicative role. Write image-search or generation prompts for the intended crop, negative space, subject placement, palette, and page position. Load humanize-image-generation when installed for generated photographs, illustrations, drawings, paintings, renderings, or raster design elements. If it is unavailable, apply provenance, artifact inspection, and placed-crop verification directly and do not claim the specialist workflow ran.
6. Render early. Render representative pages after the first complete visual system: opening, dense body, image-led, table/chart, and closing pages.
7. Run structural QA. Execute scripts/validate_pdf_bounds.py against the current PDF. Treat text outside the page as a hard failure; investigate safe-zone warnings rather than suppressing them.
8. Inspect every page. Read pdf-qa.md. View a contact sheet for cadence, then every page at readable size. Fix clipping, overlap, wrap, alignment, crop, contrast, widows/orphans, broken glyphs, and sequence problems.
9. Polish without accumulation. Freeze the element count, then improve spacing, scale, line breaks, crop, and alignment. Remove weak decoration.
10. Export and recheck. Apply the zero-defect gate, re-render the exact delivered file, confirm page count and fonts, close the defect ledger, and repeat structural and visual QA.

Non-negotiable rules

• Keep all essential text inside the live area. Only intentional background art may bleed.
• Do not place text with uncontrolled absolute coordinates or guess whether it fits.
• Preserve readable body size and line length. Shorten, reflow, or add pages before reducing type.
• Use left-aligned body copy by default; center only concise display text.
• Keep tables simple enough to scan. Split wide or tall tables instead of compressing them.
• Avoid card grids, tinted rounded boxes around every idea, stock icon rows, default blue accents, and decorative blobs.
• Maintain provenance for researched claims and licensed media.
• Do not deliver until every rendered page has been inspected and all hard QA failures are resolved.

Resources

• Read editorial-system.md when defining page geometry and typography.
• Read pdf-qa.md before the final render-and-inspect loop.
• Read typography-casting.md before locking the type system.
• Read zero-defect-qa.md before delivery.
• The bundled scripts/validate_pdf_bounds.py requires Python 3.11+ and pdfplumber; check availability before running it and do not claim the deterministic check passed when the dependency is unavailable.