Papercutter

Turn your PDF collection into a dataset you can actually use.

For researchers doing systematic reviews, meta-analyses, or literature surveys who have PDFs piling up but need structured data for analysis.

Requires Python 3.10+ and an OpenAI or Anthropic API key.

Installation

pip install papercutter[full]

Optional extras:

pip install papercutter[docling]  # PDF processing only
pip install papercutter[llm]      # LLM extraction only
pip install papercutter[report]   # Report generation only

Usage

1. Ingest

Convert PDFs to Markdown and extract tables.

papercutter ingest ./pdfs/

Output: markdown/, tables/, figures/, inventory.json

2. Configure

Generate an extraction schema from paper abstracts.

papercutter configure

Output: columns.yaml

columns:
  - key: sample_size
    description: "Total observations (N)"
    type: integer
  - key: method
    description: "Estimation strategy (DiD, RDD, OLS, etc.)"
    type: string
  - key: effect
    description: "Main treatment coefficient"
    type: float

3. Extract

Extract data from all papers using LLM.

papercutter extract

Output: extractions.json

4. Report

Generate analysis outputs.

papercutter report            # matrix.csv + review.pdf
papercutter report --condensed  # appendix format

Book Pipeline

Process books or handbooks with chapter-level summaries.

papercutter book index ./book.pdf   # Detect chapters
papercutter book extract            # Extract text
papercutter book summarize          # Summarize chapters
papercutter book report             # Generate PDF

Output: output/book_summary.pdf

Output Files

License

MIT