brain-pdf, Render a Brain Page to Publication-Quality PDF

Convention: see conventions/quality.md for output rules. The PDF is a rendering, never the primary artifact. If a PDF exists, the source brain page exists behind it.

The rule

The brain page is ALWAYS the source of truth. The PDF is a rendering of it, never a standalone artifact. If a PDF exists somewhere, the brain page must exist behind it.

What this does

Renders a brain page (markdown with frontmatter) into a publication-quality PDF using the gstack make-pdf binary. Output is suitable for:

• Sharing a personalized book mirror via email or Telegram
• Delivering a strategic-reading playbook as a clean read
• Producing a briefing or report with running headers and page numbers
• Archiving a long-form essay in a portable format

Prerequisite: gstack make-pdf

This skill depends on the gstack make-pdf binary at:

$HOME/.claude/skills/gstack/make-pdf/dist/pdf

The user must have gstack co-installed. If absent, the skill cannot run. A future v0.26+ may bundle a fallback PDF renderer; for v0.25.1 gstack is a soft prereq.

Verify it exists before invoking:

P="$HOME/.claude/skills/gstack/make-pdf/dist/pdf"
[ -x "$P" ] || { echo "make-pdf not installed; install gstack" >&2; exit 1; }

Workflow

1. RESOLVE  → Confirm the brain page exists (gbrain get <slug>).
2. STRIP    → Remove YAML frontmatter, the renderer would otherwise
              dump it as a full page of raw metadata text.
3. RENDER   → Invoke make-pdf with sane defaults (no --cover, no --toc).
4. DELIVER  → Hand the PDF to the requester via the agent's preferred
              channel (do not use raw `MEDIA:` tags on Telegram, they fail silently).

Invocation

SLUG="path/to/page"
P="$HOME/.claude/skills/gstack/make-pdf/dist/pdf"

# 1. Confirm the page exists.
gbrain get "$SLUG" > /dev/null || { echo "Page $SLUG not found" >&2; exit 1; }