Render, debug, and format Quarto documents (.qmd) to PDF via LaTeX. Use this skill whenever working with .qmd files — rendering to PDF, diagnosing render failures, fixing YAML headers, resolving LaTeX errors, managing bibliography files, tuning figure/table placement, or applying journal style guides. Trigger on: "render the qmd", "quarto PDF", "latex error", "fix the formatting", "table overflow", "figure placement", "bibliography not rendering", or any task involving a .qmd manuscript file.
Render and debug Quarto documents to PDF using the Quarto CLI and a LaTeX engine (TinyTeX or system TeX).
quarto --version
quarto install tinytex
# Core packages for academic PDFs
tlmgr install setspace booktabs caption geometry natbib lm lm-math \
microtype hyperref xcolor fancyhdr titlesec \
amsmath amssymb float placeins endfloat \
biblatex biber || true
pip install jupyter nbformat --break-system-packages -q
cd path/to/manuscript && quarto render paper.qmd --to pdf
quarto render paper.qmd --to pdf --verbose 2>&1 | tee render.log
quarto render paper.qmd --to pdf --keep-tex 2>&1 | tee render.log
grep -E "^!|Error|error|Warning|Overfull|Underfull" render.log | head -60
grep "^!" paper.log 2>/dev/null || grep "^!" render.log
Minimal working header:
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