PDF OCR Feedback

PDF OCR Feedback

Use this skill when transcribing PDF pages through a vision model and a single OCR pass is not reliable enough.

Objective

Produce page-faithful OCR with exact page boundaries, explicit uncertainty, and a practical target of at least 95/100 quality whenever the source allows it.

When to Use

Escalate to this workflow when any of the following are true:

• equations or mathematical notation matter,
• tables have nontrivial structure,
• the page is multi-column,
• the scan is noisy, low-resolution, or artifact-heavy,
• the document mixes languages, scripts, or handwriting,
• or a single OCR pass leaves meaningful uncertainty.

Output Contract

For every page:

1. Preserve reading order.
2. Capture all visible regions that matter: headers, footers, footnotes, captions, margin notes, table content, equation text, figure labels, and code blocks.
3. Emit exact page delimiters:

===== PAGE N =====
<page text>

4. Keep page order unchanged.
5. Preserve equations, units, and table semantics.
6. Never silently drop unknown symbols.
7. If a tie cannot be resolved, mark the span explicitly as [uncertain: "A" | "B"].

Pipeline Overview

For each page:
  1. Pass-1 OCR
  2. Self-evaluate on a 0-100 rubric
  3. If score >= 95 and no red flags -> ACCEPT
  4. Else run Maj@K escalation:
     a. Generate K-1 additional independent passes
     b. Vote at the smallest reliable unit
     c. Re-score the merged result
     d. If still weak, repair only flagged spans
  5. Stop when accepted, capped, or no longer improving

Phase 1: Initial Transcription

For the first pass on every page:

1. Transcribe the full page faithfully.
2. Preserve top-to-bottom, left-to-right reading order. For multi-column pages, process column-by-column.
3. Do not skip difficult regions; capture them or mark them uncertain.
4. Keep formatting structure when it carries meaning, such as headings, lists, table rows, and code blocks.

Phase 2: Self-Evaluation

Switch into evaluator mode. In this phase you do not edit text; you only score, flag, and decide whether the page is accepted or escalated.

Scoring Rubric

Score each page on a 0-100 scale across five dimensions:

• Structural fidelity: 0-25
• Completeness: 0-25
• Character and numeric accuracy: 0-20
• Layout-sensitive content: 0-20
• Noise and garbling: 0-10

What to Check

• Structural fidelity: headings, paragraph breaks, list structure, column order, and section boundaries.
• Completeness: no dropped text regions, no truncated lines, no missing footnotes or captions.
• Character and numeric accuracy: symbols, digits, citation numbers, units, and OCR confusions such as 0/O, 1/l, or rn/m.
• Layout-sensitive content: table cells, equation operators, superscripts, subscripts, code tokens, and figure labels.
• Noise and garbling: repeated fragments, hallucinated text, gibberish, or broken words.

Red Flags

Any red flag forces escalation even if the numeric score is high:

• an acknowledged unreadable region with no transcription attempt,
• a suspected skipped column,
• an ambiguous table grid or cell assignment,
• an equation with uncertain structure or operators,
• more than two unresolved uncertainty markers on the page,
• conflicting variants that remain unresolved after voting.

Mandatory Spot-Check

For every scored page:

1. Pick 3-5 high-risk snippets, such as equations, numbers, citations, table cells, or proper nouns.
2. Explain why each snippet is risky.
3. Record confidence for each snippet.
4. Flag any snippet below 80 percent confidence for retry or repair.

Evaluation Format

PAGE N - Score: XX/100
  Structural Fidelity: XX/25 - [notes]
  Completeness: XX/25 - [notes]
  Character/Numeric Accuracy: XX/20 - [notes]
  Layout-Sensitive Content: XX/20 - [notes]
  Noise/Garbling: XX/10 - [notes]
  Red Flags: [list or "none"]
  Spot-Check:
    1. "snippet text" - risk: [reason] - confidence: [high/medium/low]
    2. ...
  Decision: ACCEPT / ESCALATE (reason)

Phase 3: Maj@K Consensus Voting

Use this phase for pages scoring below 95 or pages with any red flag.