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LaTeX Compilation Skill

Purpose

Compile LaTeX source files (e.g. main.tex, standalone chapters, diffs) into PDF documents using the platform’s TeX toolchain (latexmk, pdflatex, and biber).

Required Capabilities

latex-compiler: Full LaTeX distribution with latexmk and biber installed and executable on the host path. Detection method: latexmk --version.

Mechanisms & Tools

Tool Node: latexmk-compile (satisfies latex-compilation).
Script: cat-harness-tools/scripts/latexmk-compile.sh <tex-file> [latexmk-args...]

Usage

# Monolithic paper compilation
cat-harness-tools/scripts/latexmk-compile.sh main.tex

# Quiet compilation with extra arguments
cat-harness-tools/scripts/latexmk-compile.sh diff.tex --quiet

# Standalone glossary / appendix compilation
cat-harness-tools/scripts/latexmk-compile.sh standalone-glossary.tex

Security Boundary — Safe Shell-Escape

-shell-escape allows LaTeX to invoke arbitrary external binaries. To prevent untrusted TeX payloads from executing code in CI environments:

Trusted events (push, workflow_dispatch): Shell-escape is enabled (pdflatex -shell-escape %O %S).
Untrusted events (pull_request, pull_request_target, etc.): Shell-escape is strictly disabled (pdflatex %O %S).

Exit Code Contract

In adherence to the platform’s exit code standard:

Exit Code	Meaning	Condition
0	Success	Compilation succeeded and PDF was produced.
1	Failure / Error	Syntax errors, unresolved references, or fatal TeX errors.
2	Could-not-determine	Missing positional argument `<tex-file>`, or target file not found on disk.
127	Command not found	`latexmk` or `pdflatex` missing from the environment.