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split-pdf

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Download, split, and deeply read an academic PDF that is not available through Paperpile. Use when a long external PDF needs page-wise ingestion. For Paperpile items, use the Paperpile text-extraction route instead.

skills/split-pdf/SKILL.md

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# Split-PDF: Download, Split, and Deep-Read Academic Papers

**CRITICAL RULE: Never read a full PDF. Never.** Only read the 4-page split files, and only 3 splits at a time (~12 pages). Reading a full PDF will either crash the session with an unrecoverable "prompt too long" error — destroying all context — or produce shallow, hallucinated output. There are no exceptions.

## When This Skill Is Invoked

The user wants you to read, review, or summarize an academic paper. The input is either:
- A file path to a local PDF (e.g., `./articles/smith_2024.pdf`)
- A search query or paper title (e.g., `"Gentzkow Shapiro Sinkinson 2014 competition newspapers"`)

**Important:** You cannot search for a paper you don't know exists. The user MUST provide either a file path or a specific search query. If the user invokes this skill without specifying what paper to read, ask them. Do not guess.

**Prefer Paperpile when possible.** If the paper is in Paperpile, call `paperpile get-pdf-text(citekey=KEY)` directly — you get the full structured text without any splitting. Only fall through to this skill's page-split workflow when the PDF is NOT in Paperpile (preprints, referee materials, ad-hoc reading, third-party shared PDFs).