Spike: PDF skills for Claude Code (pdf-intelligent-forms, pdf-writer, PDF 32000)

[mikewolfd]

Spike: PDF Skills for Claude Code

Evaluate and create specialized Claude Code skills to accelerate formspec-pdf implementation.

Tasks

• Evaluate pdf-intelligent-forms — Study j0ruge/pdf-intelligent-forms to understand what it does well, what's missing, and whether we can use it directly or learn from its approach
• Create pdf-writer crate skill — Skill grounded in the pdf-writer API covering low-level PDF object writing: field dictionaries, appearance streams, content streams, structure trees, font handling. Reduces iteration cycles on formspec-pdf implementation.
• Create PDF 32000 spec skill — Skill grounded in the PDF 32000-1:2008 specification covering AcroForm field model, widget annotations, appearance streams, tagged structure, and font descriptors. Enables authoritative answers on normative PDF semantics (e.g. /Ff flag bits, /DA strings, ParentTree construction).

Why

These three skills cover the full stack needed for this epic:

• High-level form intelligence — pdf-intelligent-forms
• Low-level Rust API — pdf-writer skill
• Normative PDF semantics — PDF 32000 spec skill

Having these internalized means less guessing, fewer round-trips to documentation, and spec-correct output from the start.