How to use Cursor to correct a PDF author name
The author published a memorial edition beside the hashed original with edits documented. Render inspection corrected email and font problems; ACM’s copy remained uncorrected.
news.ycombinator.com
Prompt to try
Editorial adaptation, not the source author’s exact prompt. Replace bracketed inputs and review tool permissions first.
For [PDF] and [documented author-name correction], search for an existing corrected edition and report available publisher routes. Preserve and hash the original. Create a clearly named edited edition, document every change in a README and PDF note, update [name, email, URL and metadata], and render the affected page to check typography and links.
Reach people exploring AI agents
See placements →What happened
The author published a memorial edition beside the hashed original with edits documented. Render inspection corrected email and font problems; ACM’s copy remained uncorrected.
Reported by DonHopkins on Hacker NewsHow the agent did it
- Search public copies for an existing corrected edition.
- Direct the agent to edit the published PDF author details.
- Adjust byline kerning, email font and link annotation geometry.
Where a person stepped in
The author required the direct PDF edit, recorded the basis and constraints, and documented changes alongside the preserved original.
A person approved each step before the agent continued.
The author created a memorial edition of Vanessa Freudenberg's SqueakJS conference paper after finding that public copies still used her former name. Fable, a coding agent in Cursor, searched for a corrected edition and proposed institutional routes: an ACM name-change petition or re-typesetting by co-authors. The author explicitly directed it to edit the published PDF instead.
The reported changes covered the title-page name, email address, a GitHub footnote URL, and the file's Author metadata. Editing involved more than replacing a string. The agent adjusted kerning and positioning to center the byline. The email's embedded font lacked a needed glyph, so the line was eventually set in Helvetica and the link annotation resized to fit the updated URL.
Fable rendered the first page with Ghostscript, cropped the header, and inspected the pixels with machine vision. That loop caught an unchanged email and then an incorrect font choice before further recentering and comparison at 220 dpi. The author kept the hashed original beside the memorial edition and documented every edit. The source says ACM's copy remained uncorrected. Who it's for: people with a documented basis to correct an author's name who need an explicitly identified edition and visual verification.
Prompt
Suggested prompt (written by Agents In Use, not the author's)
Source: Hacker News · DonHopkins
Frequently asked questions
What changes did the author report?
The title-page name, email address, GitHub footnote URL and Author metadata were changed. The original and memorial edition were kept alongside each other.
How was the PDF visually checked?
Fable rendered page 1 with Ghostscript, cropped the header and inspected pixels with machine vision. Repeated checks caught the old email and a mismatched font before a Helvetica correction.
More details
Remaining steps
- Render the first page with Ghostscript and inspect the header.
- Correct visual problems and preserve the hashed original beside the edited edition.
About this account
Fable researched correction routes, edited PDF content and metadata, and iterated on rendered-page inspection after explicit human direction.
Platform: Hacker News. Attribution: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799152. Prompt: Suggested (written by Agents In Use, not the author's). Sourced by the Agents In Use pipeline.
Credit: DonHopkins on Hacker News
Source published 22 Sept 2026
Source checked 14 Oct 2026
Tools and topics
Cursor · Fable · Ghostscript
PDF editing · Name correction · Visual verification
Editorial completeness: 100/100. Measures documented fields, not agent performance or verified outcomes.