Petey

Petey is a framework for PDF data extraction. It wires the PDF parser of your choice to the LLM of your choice, and with a simple schema from the user, pulls data out of PDF documents.

pip install petey

For the web version, demos and tutorials, visit Petey.

Why Petey?

The PDF format was designed to look identical on any screen or printer. It was format and technology agnostic, a universal container for the printed page. But all that mattered was its visual presentation. As long as it rendered correctly, the internal representation didn't matter.

And so the inside of a PDF is often chaotic. It is just a bunch of items — words, characters, shapes, images — and their coordinates, with little or no regard for the relationship between anything. What reads as one cohesive line of text could be three groups of words that happened to be positioned sequentially with the same y-value.

A lot of hard-working folks have developed tools to extract text from PDFs over the years. AI can be a big help too — you don't need a particularly advanced LLM to interpret some fairly difficult documents. But models need infrastructure, and not everyone has time to wire it all together.

Petey does the wiring for you. Just pass it your files and a schema that explains what you want, and it returns a JSON or CSV with your data.

How it works

1. Parse — extract text from the PDF using a local or cloud parser
2. LLM — send the text to an LLM with your schema to get the fields you want back
3. Output — return the results as JSON or CSV

Parsers

Parser	Install	Best for
pymupdf	included	Most documents. Reads embedded text directly, auto-OCRs scanned pages. Fast, free, default.
pdfplumber	included	Borderless tables. Layout-preserving spatial extraction. Text-only (no OCR).
datalab	included	Scanned/complex layouts. Remote API via Datalab. Requires DATALAB_API_KEY.
unstructured	included	General-purpose. Remote API. Requires UNSTRUCTURED_API_KEY.

See petey list parsers for all available parsers.

LLM Backends

Petey auto-detects the right backend from the model name.

Backend	Models	Auto-detected when
openai	gpt-4.1-mini, gpt-4o, etc.	Default
anthropic	claude-sonnet-4-6, claude-haiku-4-5, etc.	Model starts with claude
litellm	Gemini, DeepSeek, Fireworks, Ollama, Bedrock, 100+ more	Model has a provider prefix (e.g. gemini/, deepseek/, fireworks_ai/)

Setup

Add your API key to a .env file:

OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

Or for other providers:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
GEMINI_API_KEY=...
DATALAB_API_KEY=...

Schemas

Every extraction starts with a schema — a YAML file that tells Petey what to look for.

name: Invoice
fields:
  vendor:
    type: string
    description: Company name on the invoice
  amount:
    type: number
    description: Total amount due
  date:
    type: date
  status:
    type: category
    values: [Paid, Unpaid, Overdue]

Field types

Type	Notes
string	Any text value
number	Integer or decimal
date	Returns ISO 8601 format
category	Constrained set of values. List values: to enforce them. Case-insensitive matching.

All fields are nullable — Petey returns null for anything it can't find rather than guessing.

Schema options

Option	Description
mode: table	Extract multiple records per page (default: query — one record per file)
instructions	Extra guidance appended to the prompt
header_pages	Number of leading pages to prepend to every chunk (for context like column headers)
pages	Page range to process, e.g. "2-5" or "1,3,5-7"
input	Default PDF path or directory
output	Default output file path
parser	Default parser
ocr	Default OCR backend

CLI

# Basic extraction
petey extract --schema invoice.yaml ./invoices/ -o results.csv

# With options
petey extract --schema schema.yaml --model claude-sonnet-4-6 --parser datalab ./pdfs/

# List available backends
petey list parsers
petey list ocr
petey list llm

Flag	Default	Description
--schema / -s	required	Path to YAML schema
--model / -m	gpt-4.1-mini	LLM model ID
--parser	pymupdf	Text extraction backend
--concurrency / -c	10	Max concurrent API calls
--output / -o	stdout	Output file path
--format / -f	inferred	csv, json, or jsonl
--mode	from schema	query or table
--header-pages	from schema	Header pages to prepend to each chunk
--page-range	from schema	Page range to extract

Python API

from petey import extract, load_schema

schema, spec = load_schema("invoice.yaml")

result = extract("invoice.pdf", schema)

# With options
result = extract(
    "invoice.pdf",
    schema,
    model="claude-sonnet-4-6",
    parser="datalab",
)

Optional Dependencies

pip install petey                    # Core (pymupdf, pdfplumber, litellm)
pip install petey[unstructured]      # + Unstructured API client
pip install petey[all]               # Everything