agent-pdf-workspace 0.1.2

Offline, agent-oriented PDF exploration workspaces

agent-pdf-workspace

agent-pdf-workspace converts one local PDF into a persistent, agent-oriented workspace. Text, layout, tables, OCR, metadata, exact/regex/full-text search, rendering, and integrity checks run locally. The package contains no LLM, vision model, or embedding dependency and performs no network requests while processing documents.

An external agent can inspect queued image crops with its own vision capability and return short, schema-validated descriptions. PDF content is always treated as untrusted data.

Install

Python 3.11–3.14 is supported.

uv tool install .
# or, for development from this checkout
uv sync
uv run pdfws --version

LiteParse supplies native PDF parsing and page rendering with its OCR disabled. RapidOCR and ONNX Runtime perform OCR through Python packages installed from PyPI. RapidOCR's default PP-OCRv6 models are included in its wheel, cover English, German, and other Latin-script languages, and require no runtime model download. No Tesseract executable, Tesseract language pack, GitHub access, or separate system OCR installation is used.

In auto mode the package first inspects native extraction and sends only image-dominated or text-empty complex pages through local OCR; both layers retain their provenance when merged.

Quick start

pdfws ingest report.pdf --target ./report-workspace --ocr auto --language deu+eng --json
pdfws inspect ./report-workspace --json
pdfws search ./report-workspace "operating income" --json
pdfws read ./report-workspace --page 12 --json
pdfws visuals next ./report-workspace --json
pdfws verify ./report-workspace --json

Temporary parser sessions now default to ./report-workspace/cache/tmp/pdfws-worker-*/, so parser workers do not use %TEMP%, %TMP%, or /tmp. Select another owned cache root with an absolute path when ingesting, rendering, or submitting a visual audit:

pdfws ingest report.pdf --target ./report-workspace --cache-dir /absolute/cache --json
pdfws render ./report-workspace --page 12 --bbox 72,90,520,420 --cache-dir /absolute/cache --json

The Python API accepts the same override as Workspace.ingest(..., cache_directory=...) and Workspace.open(..., cache_directory=...). An already-open instance can switch subsequent worker sessions with workspace.set_cache_directory(...). A new external directory receives the .agent-pdf-workspace-cache-v1 ownership marker. Reusing an existing directory without that marker, or passing a relative path, is refused.

The bundled OpenCode integration additionally exports set_cache_directory(workspace, cache_directory). It validates the path and remembers it for later render and audit calls in the current OpenCode session.

For encrypted input, provide the password through standard input so it is not exposed in process arguments or persisted:

printf '%s\n' "$PDF_PASSWORD" | pdfws ingest protected.pdf --target ./workspace --password-stdin

Visual descriptions

pdfws visuals next returns either a describe_region task or an annotated audit_page task. For a region, have the calling agent inspect asset_path and submit JSON like:

{
  "visual_id": "visual-p0001-…",
  "crop_sha256": "…",
  "kind": "chart",
  "decorative": false,
  "short_description": "Revenue rises through Q3 and dips slightly in Q4.",
  "text_in_visual": "| Quarter | Revenue (EUR m) |\n|---|---:|\n| Q1 | 12 |\n| Q2 | 15 |",
  "agent_id": "document-agent",
  "model_id": "vision-model"
}

pdfws visuals submit ./workspace --task-id TASK --input description.json --json

For charts and plots, text_in_visual should be a Markdown table with one row per visible data point and explicit series/category, value, and unit columns. Preserve signs, decimals, years, and label/value associations. Mark estimates as estimates instead of inventing precision. To correct an already submitted description, recheck the crop and existing JSON and pass --replace; a formatting-only revision must not recompute or change verified values.

Page audits can add bboxes missed by deterministic raster/vector detection; every added region then becomes its own description task. Accepted descriptions are persisted as both readable Markdown and a versioned JSON sidecar under visuals/descriptions/.

Python API

from agent_pdf_workspace import Workspace

workspace = Workspace.ingest(
    "report.pdf",
    "report-workspace",
    ocr="auto",
    ocr_languages=("deu", "eng"),
)
hits = workspace.search("cash flow", mode="fts")
page = workspace.read_page(hits[0].page)
crop_path = workspace.render_region(hits[0].page, (72, 90, 520, 420))

Search hits include a stable hit ID, page, page-coordinate bounding box, kind, and snippet. Custom ingestion limits supplied with IngestConfig are persisted without secrets and remain effective when the workspace is reopened.

The main public contracts are Pydantic models exported from agent_pdf_workspace. Versioned JSON Schemas and the bundled agent skill are included in the wheel; export the latter with pdfws skill export TARGET.

OpenCode installation

OpenCode calls its configurable home OPENCODE_CONFIG_DIR. The installer reads that variable first and otherwise asks the installed CLI via opencode debug paths; it does not assume that ~/.config/opencode is the active directory.

pdfws opencode path --json
pdfws opencode install --json

The install command writes the skill to <config>/skills/agent-pdf-workspace and native tools to <config>/tools/agent_pdf_workspace.ts. Use --config-dir DIR for an explicit directory or --force to replace only those two package-owned artifacts. The OpenCode tools invoke pdfws without a shell and expose bounded inspect, search, page-read, region-render, and visual-task operations.

Workspace format

The source PDF is copied unchanged to source/original.pdf. Human-readable Markdown provides navigation while JSON sidecars preserve coordinates and provenance. Tables are also emitted as CSV. SQLite FTS and rendered query crops live under cache/ and are regenerable.

Processing flow

agent-pdf-workspace creates a persistent, page-oriented workspace rather than separate per-page PDF files:

flowchart LR
    A["Source PDF"] --> B["Copy unchanged<br/>source/original.pdf"]
    B --> C["pypdf inventory<br/>pages, metadata, attachments, active content"]
    B --> D["LiteParse<br/>native extraction and page rendering<br/>OCR disabled"]
    D --> K["RapidOCR plus ONNX Runtime<br/>selected local OCR<br/>models bundled in PyPI wheel"]
    C --> E["pdfplumber geometry<br/>tables, regions, page previews"]
    D --> E
    K --> E
    E --> F["Per-page Markdown and JSON"]
    E --> G["Table MD, JSON, and CSV"]
    E --> H["Visual PNG assets and tasks"]
    F --> I["SQLite full-text index"]
    G --> I
    H --> I
    I --> J["Integrity manifest and reusable workspace"]

Workspace and cache versions

The persistent workspace schema is 1.0 in every package version to date. The package release changes only where temporary parser-worker sessions are created:

Package versions	Persistent workspace	Temporary parser-worker location
0.1.0–0.1.1	Schema 1.0; regenerable search and render data below WORKSPACE_ROOT/cache/	OS temporary directory selected by Python (%TEMP%, %TMP%, or /tmp)
0.1.2	Schema 1.0; existing workspaces open without conversion; OCR moves from LiteParse/Tesseract to Python-packaged RapidOCR/ONNX Runtime	WORKSPACE_ROOT/cache/tmp/ by default, or an absolute owned cache selected through Python, CLI, or OpenCode

Old pdfws-worker-* directories contain stage-specific result.json scratch without a reliable source-PDF identity. They are not reusable document caches and are never imported as authoritative workspace data. A complete workspace from 0.1.0 or 0.1.1, however, remains directly usable because its schema did not change.

Persistent directory structure

One target directory represents one source PDF. Files below cache/ are regenerable; the other listed records are canonical unless noted otherwise:

WORKSPACE_ROOT/
├── index.md
├── document.md
├── pages/
│   ├── index.md
│   └── page-0001.md
├── layout/pages/
│   └── page-0001.json
├── tables/
│   └── <table-id>.{md,json,csv}
├── visuals/
│   ├── index.md
│   ├── assets/<sha256>.png
│   └── descriptions/<visual-id>.{md,json}
├── tasks/
│   ├── visuals.jsonl
│   └── audits/<task-id>.json
├── source/original.pdf
├── metadata/
│   ├── workspace.json
│   └── diagnostics.jsonl
├── cache/                                      # regenerable and integrity-excluded
│   ├── .agent-pdf-workspace-cache-v1
│   ├── search.sqlite
│   ├── renders/page-<n>-<key>.png
│   ├── audit-staging/<sha256>.png
│   ├── rejected-agent-input/
│   └── tmp/
│       └── pdfws-worker-<random>/result.json   # temporary; removed after each worker
├── manifest-sha256.txt
├── log.md                                      # runtime log; integrity-excluded
└── .pdfws.lock                                 # temporary writer lock

Page splitting produces pages/page-0001.md and layout/pages/page-0001.json, not page-0001.pdf. The original PDF remains byte-for-byte available at source/original.pdf.

When --cache-dir or cache_directory= selects an external cache, only the temporary worker branch moves:

<ABSOLUTE_CACHE_ROOT>/
├── .agent-pdf-workspace-cache-v1
└── tmp/
    └── pdfws-worker-<random>/result.json       # temporary

Canonical output, search.sqlite, and rendered query crops remain below the selected PDF workspace. Worker sessions contain bounded intermediate JSON and are deleted on normal completion or timeout; they are not importable document workspaces.

OpenCode integration creates files only when explicitly installed:

<OpenCode config directory>/
├── skills/agent-pdf-workspace/
│   ├── SKILL.md
│   └── agents/openai.yaml
└── tools/agent_pdf_workspace.ts

The layout is OKF-inspired but does not claim compliance with a separate OKF standard. ODT/ODF export is intentionally outside version 1.

The reproducible local comparison and its limitations are documented in benchmarks/parsebench/results/2026-07-15-test-suite.md.

See docs/format-v1.md for the format contract and SECURITY.md for the trust model.

Development

uv sync --python 3.12
uv run pytest --cov=agent_pdf_workspace --cov-fail-under=80
uv run ruff check .
uv run ruff format --check .
uv run mypy src/agent_pdf_workspace
uv run python -m build

No public PyPI release or remote repository is created automatically.