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Ocr And Documents

Extract text from PDFs/scans (pymupdf, marker-pdf).

Skill metadata

Source Bundled (installed by default)
Path skills/productivity/ocr-and-documents
Version 2.3.0
Author Hermes Agent
License MIT
Tags PDF, Documents, Research, Arxiv, Text-Extraction, OCR
Related skills powerpoint

Reference: full SKILL.md

ℹ️ Info

The following is the complete skill definition that Hermes loads when this skill is triggered. This is what the agent sees as instructions when the skill is active.

PDF & Document Extraction

For DOCX: use python-docx (parses actual document structure, far better than OCR). For PPTX: see the powerpoint skill (uses python-pptx with full slide/notes support). This skill covers PDFs and scanned documents.

Step 1: Remote URL Available?

If the document has a URL, always try web_extract first:

web_extract(urls=["https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03300"])
web_extract(urls=["https://example.com/report.pdf"])

This handles PDF-to-markdown conversion via Firecrawl with no local dependencies.

Only use local extraction when: the file is local, web_extract fails, or you need batch processing.

Step 2: Choose Local Extractor

Feature pymupdf (~25MB) marker-pdf (~3-5GB)
Text-based PDF
Scanned PDF (OCR) ✅ (90+ languages)
Tables ✅ (basic) ✅ (high accuracy)
Equations / LaTeX
Code blocks
Forms
Headers/footers removal
Reading order detection
Images extraction ✅ (embedded) ✅ (with context)
Images → text (OCR)
EPUB
Markdown output ✅ (via pymupdf4llm) ✅ (native, higher quality)
Install size ~25MB ~3-5GB (PyTorch + models)
Speed Instant ~1-14s/page (CPU), ~0.2s/page (GPU)

Decision: Use pymupdf unless you need OCR, equations, forms, or complex layout analysis.

If the user needs marker capabilities but the system lacks ~5GB free disk:

"This document needs OCR/advanced extraction (marker-pdf), which requires ~5GB for PyTorch and models. Your system has [X]GB free. Options: free up space, provide a URL so I can use web_extract, or I can try pymupdf which works for text-based PDFs but not scanned documents or equations."


pymupdf (lightweight)

pip install pymupdf pymupdf4llm

Via helper script:

python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf              # Plain text
python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf --markdown    # Markdown
python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf --tables      # Tables
python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf --images out/ # Extract images
python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf --metadata    # Title, author, pages
python scripts/extract_pymupdf.py document.pdf --pages 0-4   # Specific pages

Inline:

python3 -c "
import pymupdf
doc = pymupdf.open('document.pdf')
for page in doc:
    print(page.get_text())
"

marker-pdf (high-quality OCR)

# Check disk space first
python scripts/extract_marker.py --check

pip install marker-pdf

Via helper script:

python scripts/extract_marker.py document.pdf                # Markdown
python scripts/extract_marker.py document.pdf --json         # JSON with metadata
python scripts/extract_marker.py document.pdf --output_dir out/  # Save images
python scripts/extract_marker.py scanned.pdf                 # Scanned PDF (OCR)
python scripts/extract_marker.py document.pdf --use_llm      # LLM-boosted accuracy

CLI (installed with marker-pdf):

marker_single document.pdf --output_dir ./output
marker /path/to/folder --workers 4    # Batch

Arxiv Papers

# Abstract only (fast)
web_extract(urls=["https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.03300"])

# Full paper
web_extract(urls=["https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.03300"])

# Search
web_search(query="arxiv GRPO reinforcement learning 2026")

pymupdf handles these natively — use execute_code or inline Python:

# Split: extract pages 1-5 to a new PDF
import pymupdf
doc = pymupdf.open("report.pdf")
new = pymupdf.open()
for i in range(5):
    new.insert_pdf(doc, from_page=i, to_page=i)
new.save("pages_1-5.pdf")
# Merge multiple PDFs
import pymupdf
result = pymupdf.open()
for path in ["a.pdf", "b.pdf", "c.pdf"]:
    result.insert_pdf(pymupdf.open(path))
result.save("merged.pdf")
# Search for text across all pages
import pymupdf
doc = pymupdf.open("report.pdf")
for i, page in enumerate(doc):
    results = page.search_for("revenue")
    if results:
        print(f"Page {i+1}: {len(results)} match(es)")
        print(page.get_text("text"))

No extra dependencies needed — pymupdf covers split, merge, search, and text extraction in one package.


Notes