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SPECIFICTION
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pdf-cli

github.com

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Spec score 7.1 #32 of 39 in PDF Compression Software

Spec sheet

Purpose
pdf-cli is a command-line tool for common PDF operations, distributed as a single binary.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Intended users
The README describes the tool as suitable for automation and batch processing, and says it works without a GUI.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
Audience
The README describes the tool as suitable for scripting, automation, and batch processing, with no GUI required.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Platforms
Prebuilt binaries are listed for Linux amd64 and arm64, macOS amd64 and arm64, and Windows amd64.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
Integrations
OCR can use native Tesseract or a built-in WASM backend, which downloads language data from the Tesseract tessdata_fast GitHub repository on first use.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Security
The security policy says user-provided files are processed locally and not sent to external services, except for OCR language-data downloads.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Support
The repository welcomes contributions and directs contributors to its contributing guidelines.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
License
The repository states that pdf-cli is licensed under the MIT License.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Automation
It supports batch processing, stdin and stdout pipelines, and JSON, CSV, or TSV output for supported commands.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Installation
The README recommends installation with Go 1.25 or later and also documents prebuilt releases and building from source.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
OCR
Text extraction supports OCR for scanned PDFs using native Tesseract when installed or a built-in WASM fallback.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
OCR limitation
The built-in WASM OCR backend processes images sequentially, and its first use downloads about 15 MB of language data per language.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Password handling
The README recommends interactive prompts, password files, or the PDF_CLI_PASSWORD environment variable; its security policy says passwords are not logged or stored.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
PDF operations
Commands include merging, splitting, extracting, reordering, rotating, compressing, encrypting, decrypting, and watermarking PDFs.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
PDF/A limitation
PDF/A validation and conversion are described as basic and do not provide full ISO 19005 compliance; color-profile validation is unsupported.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
PDF/A limits
The project says its PDF/A validation and optimization are basic and do not provide full ISO 19005 compliance; color-profile validation is unsupported.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
Single binary
The project describes pdf-cli as a fast single binary with no external dependencies and parallel processing for large operations.Read 4 Oct 2026 · github.com
Supported versions
The security policy lists versions 2.0.x and 1.3.x as supported and versions below 1.3 as unsupported.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Text and images
It can extract PDF text and embedded images, create PDFs from images, and read scanned PDFs using OCR.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com
Vulnerability reporting
The policy asks users to report vulnerabilities privately by emailing the maintainer or using GitHub private vulnerability reporting, and states an initial response target of 48 hours.Read 11 Oct 2026 · github.com

Where Specifiction places it

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