MCP's read_file previously hard-required UTF-8 text decoding, so any
PDF in an allowed folder failed with "Cannot read file as UTF-8
text" — chat attachments already supported PDFs (raw bytes to
vision-capable models), but the AI couldn't read one on its own
during agentic file-tool use. search_files' content_search had the
same gap, silently skipping PDFs.
Adds MCPService.extractPDFText(atPath:) using PDFKit (built into
macOS, no new dependency) to pull text from a PDF's text layer.
Wired into both read_file and search_files' content search. Returns
a clear error for scanned/image-only PDFs with no text layer.
Automatically covers the Research Agents sub-agent tool loop too,
since it shares the same executeTool dispatcher.
Verified live: asked the AI to read a real PDF containing "The
secret code is PINEAPPLE-42." via read_file — it extracted the text
correctly through the MCP tool-call path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
runeandClaude Sonnet 5
69dbf17f5e