Skyhold PDF

Skyhold PDF is a high-performance Go-based CLI and library designed to split, merge, compress, and extract PDF files with extreme memory efficiency. It handles multi-gigabyte files with ease by utilizing stream-based indexing rather than loading full documents into RAM.

Built on top of pdfcpu, it is optimized for cloud-native pipelines, supporting direct integration with Go io streams (S3, MinIO, or local storage).

Key Capabilities

• Memory Efficient: Streams individual pages via indexing, perfect for massive PDFs.
• Advanced Re-sampling: Pure-Go image compression with worker-pool parallelization for aggressive size reduction.
• Combined Merge & Compress: Merge multiple PDFs and optimize the resulting file in a single processing pass.
• Cloud Ready: Plugs directly into any io.ReadSeeker or io.Writer.
• Zero Dependencies: Compiles to a single static binary without requiring Ghostscript or CGO.

Installation

For CLI usage:

Install the pdf binary directly into your $GOPATH/bin:

go install github.com/bastianrob/skyhold-pdf/cmd/pdf@latest

For Library usage:

Add the processor package to your Go project:

go get github.com/bastianrob/skyhold-pdf

---

CLI Usage

1. Splitting (Chunking)

Split a massive PDF into smaller batches of a specific page size.

pdf -i report.pdf -s 50 -o ./output/ -v

2. Merging (Combining)

Merge multiple PDF files into one. You can optionally compress the result.

pdf combine doc1.pdf doc2.pdf -o merged.pdf -c -q 60

3. Compression

Optimize an existing PDF's structure and downsample images.

# Aggressive optimization
pdf compress -i scan.pdf -o small.pdf -q 40 -m 50 -v

4. Extraction

Extract a targeted page range.

pdf extract -i source.pdf -f 10 -t 20 -o snippet.pdf

Global Flags

• -i, --input: Source PDF file (Required for root, compress, extract)
• -o, --out: Destination file or directory (Required)
• -s, --size: Pages per chunk (Root command)
• -c, --compress: Enable structural and image optimization
• -q, --quality: JPEG compression quality (1-100, default: 60)
• -m, --scale: Image scaling factor (1-100, default: 100)
• -j, --concurrency: Parallel workers for optimization (Default: NumCPU)
• -p, --password: PDF password
• -f, --force: Overwrite existing files
• -v, --verbose: Enable progress bars and detailed logs

---

Library Usage

Example: Merging PDFs Programmatically

import "github.com/bastianrob/skyhold-pdf/processor"

func main() {
    config := processor.CombineConfig{
        Inputs:   []io.ReadSeeker{file1, file2},
        Compress: true,
        Quality:  50,
        CreateWriter: func() (io.WriteCloser, error) {
            return os.Create("merged.pdf")
        },
        OnProgress: func(curr, total int) {
            fmt.Printf("Merging: %d/%d\n", curr, total)
        },
    }
    processor.CombinePDFs(config)
}

License

Skyhold PDF is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Copyright © 2026 Robin Bastian / SkyHold.