OkraPDF Codex Panel

Use this skill when the user is looking at a PDF in OkraPDF and wants the agent to act on the selected page region, table, block, or text.

This is the MagicPath pattern for PDFs:

1. okra bridge serve starts a loopback viewer and selection bridge.
2. OkraPDF runs in the agent IDE browser pane at http://127.0.0.1:7373/viewer?doc=<docId>.
3. The user drags on the PDF page; the viewer shows "Selection synced to Codex bridge."
4. The agent reads that state with okra select --json.
5. For visual grounding, the agent crops the actual selected pixels and inspects the crop.
6. The agent returns JSON, or runs okra ask --selection / okra extract --selection when document reasoning or typed extraction is needed.

For command details, see references/cli-reference.md.

Interaction Model

Treat the bridge selection as a visual pointer, not as a final answer. A bbox may point at logos, a chart, a table, a paragraph, or whitespace. When the user asks "what is this?", "give me JSON", "extract this", or otherwise refers to a highlighted region, do this in order:

1. Read the active selection with okra select --json.
2. Crop the selected pixels from the page image.
3. Inspect the crop visually.
4. Return JSON grounded in what is visible in the crop.
5. Use okra ask --selection or okra extract --selection only after the crop confirms the selected region and when semantic document context is useful.

Do not rely on okra ask --selection alone to identify the selected region; it can answer from nearby document context. The crop is the source of truth for "what did the user highlight?"

First Step

Check the CLI and auth state:

okra auth status

If okra is missing, install it:

npm install -g okrapdf

If auth is missing, run:

okra auth login

Start The Local PDF Panel

Start the bridge in a background terminal/session:

okra bridge serve

The bridge listens only on 127.0.0.1:7373. It serves a local viewer, proxies OkraPDF page/status data with the CLI's API key server-side, accepts local selection posts, and exposes the latest selection at GET /selection.

Do not expose the bridge through a tunnel or bind it to a public interface.

Then open the local viewer in the IDE/browser pane:

http://127.0.0.1:7373/viewer?doc=<docId>

The user should drag on a PDF page to select a bbox before selection-aware commands are run. When the selection is accepted, the viewer displays "Selection synced to Codex bridge."

Hosted Fallback

For an existing OkraPDF document id:

https://app.okrapdf.com/documents?document=<docId>&view=review&embed=codex

Open that URL in the IDE/browser pane. The user should select a PDF bbox, table, or text block in the review surface before selection-aware commands are run.

If the user has a local PDF instead of a document id:

okra upload ./report.pdf --json

Then open the returned document id with the embed URL above.

Read Current Selection

Before acting on phrases like "this table", "the selected section", "that number", or "extract this", read the active selection:

okra select --json

Expected shape:

{
  "docId": "doc-abc123",
  "page": 2,
  "nodeId": "node-42",
  "bbox": { "x": 0.12, "y": 0.34, "width": 0.52, "height": 0.18 },
  "text": "Selected text or table payload",
  "selectedAt": "2026-05-18T12:00:00.000Z",
  "source": "https://app.okrapdf.com"
}

If no selection is available, tell the user to click a region in the OkraPDF panel, then retry okra select --json.

If the user says "this", "that", "the highlighted region", "the selected table", or similar, do not ask them to paste coordinates. Run okra select --json first and use the returned docId, page, and bbox.

Crop The Selected Pixels

Preferred helper:

node <skill-dir>/scripts/crop-selection.mjs --out /tmp/okra-selection.png

Then inspect /tmp/okra-selection.png with the agent's image viewer and answer from that visual crop.

The helper prints JSON like:

{
  "selection": { "docId": "doc-...", "page": 1, "bbox": { "x": 0.1, "y": 0.2, "width": 0.3, "height": 0.1 } },
  "cropPath": "/tmp/okra-selection.png",
  "crop": { "x": 108, "y": 320, "width": 420, "height": 180 }
}

If the helper is unavailable, reproduce the same logic manually: fetch the current page image from http://127.0.0.1:7373/viewer/doc/<docId>/pages/<page>/image, convert the normalized bbox to pixels, crop it, inspect the image, then answer.

Ask About The Selection

Use this for natural-language questions about the selected region:

okra ask "What is this table saying?" --selection --json

For streaming text:

okra ask "Summarize the selected section." --selection --stream

The CLI reads the selected docId, page, node id, bbox, and text from the bridge and appends them as explicit context to the document question.

Extract The Selection

Use this when the user wants JSON, CSV-ready fields, line items, table rows, or a typed answer from the selected region:

okra extract --selection --schema ./schema.json --json

Inline schema is also allowed:

okra extract --selection \
  --schema '{"type":"object","properties":{"rows":{"type":"array","items":{"type":"object"}}}}' \
  --json

Prefer a narrow schema that matches the user's requested output. Keep the user-facing answer focused on the returned JSON or the saved output file.

Common Flows

"Extract this table as JSON"

okra select --json
node <skill-dir>/scripts/crop-selection.mjs --out /tmp/okra-selection.png

Inspect the crop. If it is a table, return JSON directly from the visible rows/columns, or run okra extract --selection --schema ./table.schema.json --json after the crop confirms the target region.

"What does this highlighted paragraph mean?"

okra select --json
node <skill-dir>/scripts/crop-selection.mjs --out /tmp/okra-selection.png
okra ask "Explain the selected paragraph in plain English." --selection

"Upload this PDF and let me select from it"

okra upload ./report.pdf --json

Open:

http://127.0.0.1:7373/viewer?doc=<docId>

Then:

okra select --json

Rules

• Use okra select --json whenever the user refers to "this", "that", "selected", "highlighted", or a visible PDF region.
• For "what do you see?", "give me JSON", and visual disambiguation, crop and inspect the selected pixels before using document Q&A.
• Prefer okra ask --selection for explanation, verification, summarization, and QA.
• Prefer okra extract --selection --schema ... for structured output.
• Do not guess a document id if the bridge selection has one.
• Do not run okra bridge serve bound to anything other than loopback.
• If the bridge is not running, start it or tell the user exactly which command to run.
• If the selected text is empty but bbox/page is present, proceed; OkraPDF can still answer from page and bbox context.
• This skill is for the interactive Codex-native panel. For raw HTTP recipes, use okra-curl; for generated PDFs, use okra-create; for parser bake-offs, use pdf-parse-qa.