Chat with a PDF on the command line, powered by Claude.
Project description
pdfask
Chat with a PDF on the command line, powered by Claude.
Uses Claude's native PDF support — no text extraction, no OCR. The model reads the document directly, including tables, layout, and embedded images. Prompt caching makes follow-up questions ~10x cheaper than the first.
Install
pip install pdfask
Or with uv:
uv tool install pdfask
Setup
Get an API key from https://console.anthropic.com/settings/keys, then either export it:
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
…or drop it in a .env file in whatever directory you're running pdfask from:
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
Usage
One-shot question:
pdfask report.pdf "What's the executive summary?"
Interactive REPL (Ctrl-D to exit):
pdfask report.pdf
Configuration
| Env var | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY |
(required) | From console.anthropic.com |
ANTHROPIC_MODEL |
claude-opus-4-7 |
Override to use a smaller model |
Development
git clone https://github.com/dsl16/pdf-chat
cd pdf-chat
uv tool install --editable .
License
MIT
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
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