AI PDF Tools
Summarize and chat with your PDFs using AI.
Long documents are the ones nobody reads: a sixty-page report, a supplier contract, a set of meeting minutes you have been forwarded. The tools in this category are aimed at getting the substance out of a document quickly — telling you what it says so you can decide whether you need to read it properly.
In this category
- AI Summarize PDF
- You need the gist of a long document fast, before deciding whether to read it in full.
What a summary is good for, and what it is not
A summary is a triage instrument. It is genuinely useful for deciding whether a document is relevant, for recalling what a report you read last month actually concluded, and for orienting yourself before a meeting. It is a poor substitute for reading anything you will be held to. Summarisation compresses by dropping detail, and in documents the dropped detail is often the part that matters — the exception in a contract clause, the condition on a payment term, the caveat in a methodology. Use it to decide what to read, not instead of reading it.
A summary can only work with the text that is there
The same constraint that catches people converting PDFs applies here: if a document is a scan, it contains an image of text and no text at all, so there is nothing to summarise. Run OCR PDF first to add a text layer, then summarise. The quick test is the same — open the file and try to select a word. If you cannot highlight it, it is a scan.
Reading a long document better without any AI at all
Before reaching for a summary, a few ordinary steps often get you further. Make the document searchable with OCR and search for the terms you actually care about — 'termination', 'liability', 'deadline' — which finds the clauses that matter rather than an average of the whole file. Extract the pages that are relevant and read those properly. And check whether the document already summarises itself: reports have executive summaries, contracts have schedules, and papers have abstracts, all written by someone who knew which details could not be dropped.
Frequently asked questions
Is this tool available yet?
Not yet — it is in development and the page is here so you can find it when it ships. Everything else on the site is live and working today.
Can I summarise a scanned document?
Only after running OCR on it. A scan holds no text for a summariser to read, so OCR has to add a text layer first.
Should I rely on a summary for a contract?
No. Summarisation drops detail, and in contracts the detail is the point. Use a summary to find the sections worth reading, then read them.