PDF Utilities for GitHub Copilot

AI-powered PDF tools built directly into GitHub Copilot agent mode — no MCP server, no subprocess, works everywhere.

Features

• Read PDFs — Extract text content (full file or specific page ranges)
• Get PDF Info — Retrieve metadata: page count, title, author, file size, dates
• Create PDFs — Generate a new PDF from plain text with custom formatting
• Merge PDFs — Combine multiple PDF files into one
• Split PDFs — Extract a page range to a new file
• Update Metadata — Modify title, author, subject, keywords
• Extract Pages — Save individual pages as separate PDF files

All 7 tools are available in Copilot agent mode and can be referenced with #.

Installation

1. Open VS Code
2. Go to Extensions (Ctrl+Shift+X)
3. Search for PDF Utilities
4. Click Install

Requirements: VS Code 1.100+ and GitHub Copilot.

Usage

Agent mode (recommended)

Ask Copilot in agent mode — tools are invoked automatically:

Read /home/user/report.pdf and summarise it
Create a PDF at /tmp/notes.pdf from the following text: ...
Merge /tmp/a.pdf and /tmp/b.pdf into /tmp/combined.pdf
Extract pages 1-5 from /tmp/long.pdf and save to /tmp/short.pdf

Manual tool references

You can reference tools explicitly with #:

#pdf_read  #pdf_info  #pdf_create  #pdf_merge
#pdf_split  #pdf_metadata  #pdf_extract

@pdf Chat Participant

Attach a PDF file in chat and ask questions about it:

1. Click the 📎 attach button
2. Select a PDF file
3. Type @pdf What does this document say?

Available Tools

Note: File paths must be absolute (e.g. C:\Users\me\file.pdf or /home/me/file.pdf).

Configuration

Ctrl+, → search for PDF Utilities

Commands

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and type PDF Utilities:

• PDF Utilities: Show Available PDF Tools — list tool reference names
• PDF Utilities: Open PDF Utilities Documentation — open online docs

Troubleshooting

Tools not appearing in agent mode

• Confirm the extension is enabled in the Extensions panel.
• Check the Output panel (View › Output › PDF Utilities) for activation messages.
• Reload VS Code if tools appeared previously but are now missing.

"File not found" errors

• Use absolute paths (not relative paths like ./file.pdf).
• Verify the file exists and you have read permission.

"Invalid page number" errors

• Pages are 1-based. First page = 1.
• Range format: 1-5 or 1,3,5-10.

Large PDFs are slow

• Increase pdfUtilities.maxPdfSize if needed.
• Consider splitting or extracting only the pages you need.

License

MIT — see LICENSE

Links

• GitHub Repository
• Report Issues
• pdf-lib · pdf-parse

1. Open VS Code
2. Go to Extensions (Cmd+Shift+X / Ctrl+Shift+X)
3. Search for "PDF Utilities"
4. Click Install

From VSIX File

1. Download the latest .vsix file from releases
2. Open VS Code
3. Press Cmd+Shift+P (Mac) / Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux)
4. Type "Install from VSIX"
5. Select the downloaded file

🎯 Usage

Once installed, you can use PDF operations directly in GitHub Copilot Chat:

Reading PDFs

You: "Read the PDF at /Users/name/Documents/report.pdf"
You: "What does contract.pdf say?"
You: "Extract text from pages 1-5 of document.pdf"

Creating PDFs

You: "Create a PDF with this content: [your text]"
You: "Make a PDF from my meeting notes and save it as notes.pdf"
You: "Generate a PDF report with title 'Q1 Results'"

Merging PDFs

You: "Merge report1.pdf and report2.pdf into final.pdf"
You: "Combine all PDFs in my Documents folder"

Splitting PDFs

You: "Extract pages 1-10 from document.pdf"
You: "Split the first 5 pages into a separate file"
You: "Get pages 2, 4, and 6-10 from the report"

Updating Metadata

You: "Change the PDF title to 'Annual Report 2024'"
You: "Update the author of contract.pdf to 'John Doe'"

Extracting Pages

You: "Extract pages 1, 3, and 5 into separate files"
You: "Create individual PDFs for each page"