Resilient Document Generation Workflow (Multi-Format + Unicode-Safe)

When to Use

Use this skill when generating documents in multiple formats (.docx, .pdf, .html) and you need:

• Reliable execution with pre-flight environment verification
• Automatic Unicode handling based on target format
• Fallback options when primary tools (pandoc/LaTeX) are unavailable
• Clear error isolation through discrete, observable steps

Trigger this workflow when:

• shell_agent returns unknown/unclear errors on document generation
• You need multiple output formats from one source
• Documents contain special characters, symbols, or non-ASCII text
• Previous PDF generation attempts failed due to encoding or missing dependencies

Pre-Flight Environment Check

Before starting, verify your environment has the required tools:

run_shell
command: which pandoc && pandoc --version | head -1

run_shell
command: which pdflatex || which xelatex || which wkhtmltopdf || echo "No PDF engine found"

run_shell
command: python3 -c "import fpdf; print('fpdf2 available')" 2>/dev/null || echo "fpdf2 not available"

run_shell
command: python3 -c "import reportlab; print('reportlab available')" 2>/dev/null || echo "reportlab not available"

If pandoc is missing: Install via apt-get install pandoc or brew install pandoc

If no PDF engine found: Choose fallback approach:

• Install LaTeX: apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-fonts-recommended
• Or use wkhtmltopdf: apt-get install wkhtmltopdf
• Or use Python fallback (fpdf2/reportlab) - see Alternative PDF Generation section

Core Technique