stirling-pdf

What This Skill Does

The Stirling-PDF skill integrates your OpenClaw agent with a self-hosted Stirling-PDF instance, providing a powerful toolkit for document manipulation. By acting as an interface to the Stirling-PDF REST API, this skill allows you to perform over 60 different operations on PDF files. Whether you are dealing with administrative documents, scanned invoices, or legal contracts, this skill automates the heavy lifting of processing files without relying on third-party cloud services. You can perform complex tasks such as merging multiple project reports, splitting large manuals into separate sections, compressing high-resolution scans to meet email attachment limits, or applying OCR to make archived paperwork searchable and indexable.

Installation

To begin, ensure you have a running instance of Stirling-PDF reachable by your machine. You can deploy it easily via Docker or your preferred hosting method. Once the instance is active, locate your API key if you have enabled authentication. Install the skill using the OpenClaw CLI command: clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/angusthefuzz/stirling-pdf. After installation, configure your environment variables by setting STIRLING_PDF_URL to your instance's address (default is http://localhost:8080) and STIRLING_PDF_KEY if required. Once configured, you can utilize the provided wrapper script or interact directly with the API endpoints to manage your document workflow.

Use Cases

• Archive Digitization: Convert stacks of legacy scanned PDFs into searchable text documents using the OCR tool to improve document retrieval efficiency.
• Contract Management: Quickly redact sensitive information like PII or bank details from business documents before sharing them with external partners.
• Report Automation: Automatically merge monthly financial sheets and convert various formats (like Word or Excel) into a finalized, uniform PDF report.
• Security: Batch process sensitive files by adding password protection to secure your private document storage.

Example Prompts

1. "Merge all the PDF files in my 'Projects/Quarterly-Review' folder and save the result as final_report.pdf."
2. "Compress the 'scanned_manual.pdf' file so that it is small enough to send as an email attachment."
3. "Run OCR on 'document_scan.pdf' to make the text inside selectable and searchable for my records."

Tips & Limitations

• Swagger UI: Always keep your Stirling-PDF instance's Swagger UI URL handy; it is your best resource for troubleshooting specific parameter requirements or discovering new functionality as the software updates.
• Performance: For massive PDF files, ensure your server has sufficient RAM allocated, as PDF processing is memory-intensive.
• Security: Since this interacts with local file systems, always ensure your instance is protected if exposed to a network. Avoid running sensitive operations on insecure, public-facing instances without API keys enabled.