Document Generation Fallback Workflow (Unicode-Safe)

When to Use

Use this skill when shell_agent returns unknown or unclear errors on complex document generation tasks, especially when:

• Generating documents in multiple formats (e.g., .docx, .pdf, .html)
• The error message doesn't provide clear debugging information
• You need to handle special characters, symbols, or non-ASCII text safely
• PDF generation fails due to LaTeX encoding issues

Core Technique

Instead of delegating the entire document generation to shell_agent, manually split the workflow into discrete, observable steps:

1. Content creation → Use write_file to create source document (Markdown)
2. Unicode sanitization → Preprocess markdown to replace problematic characters before PDF conversion
3. Format conversion with stderr capture → Use run_shell with pandoc for each target format, capturing full stderr output
4. Verification → Check output files exist and are valid

⚠️ Unicode & LaTeX Compatibility Warning

Critical: PDF generation via pandoc typically uses LaTeX (pdflatex or xelatex), which has limited Unicode support. Common problematic characters include:

Character	Issue	Safe Replacement
, (em dash)	May not render	-- or -
, (en dash)	May not render	-
" " (curly quotes)	Encoding errors	" " (straight quotes)
' ' (curly apostrophe)	Encoding errors	' (straight apostrophe)
… (ellipsis)	May not render	...
→ ← ↑ ↓ (arrows)	LaTeX incompatibility	-> <- ^ v
✓ ✗ (checkmarks)	May not render	[x] [ ]
★ ● (symbols)	May not render	* -
© ® ™	May require packages	(c) (r) (tm)
Non-ASCII letters (é, ñ, ü)	Font-dependent	Use xeLaTeX or replace

Step-by-Step Workflow

Step 1: Create Source Content with write_file