---

name: inference description: "Run EasyOCR on images and image-like inputs with the Reader API or CLI, including batching, box extraction, and output formatting." metadata: disco-role: operating disable-model-invocation: true license: Apache 2.0

EasyOCR Inference

Use this sub-skill for ordinary OCR work: read text from an image, screenshot, scan, crop, or batch of same-sized images with EasyOCR's built-in models.

Use when

• The user wants text extracted from an image or screenshot.
• The task mentions readtext, detect, recognize, or readtext_batched.
• The task mentions the EasyOCR CLI.
• The user wants boxes, paragraphs, detail=0, JSON/dict output, or allowlist/blocklist filtering.

Do not use when

• The user is loading a custom recognition bundle. Use sub-skills/custom-models/.
• The user is enabling DBNet or compiling DCN. Use sub-skills/dbnet/.
• The task is training or ONNX export. Those are out of scope for this skill.

Quick workflow

1. Confirm the language codes and backend choice with ../../references/configuration.md.
2. Run ../../scripts/inspect_runtime.py if you want a fast install/backends smoke before a real OCR call.
3. Use scripts/readtext_smoke.py for a single-image OCR sanity check.
4. Read references/workflows.md for end-to-end patterns.
5. Read references/troubleshooting.md when the result or CLI behavior looks wrong.

Typical inputs and outputs

• Inputs: file path, NumPy array, raw bytes, or a raw image URL.
• Outputs: strings, (box, text, confidence) tuples, dicts, or JSON strings, depending on detail and output_format.
• readtext_batched returns one OCR result list per input image.
• detect returns boxes first; recognize consumes boxes or a full crop.

Common control points

• gpu: automatic accelerator selection or explicit CPU/device choice.
• download_enabled: whether missing model files may be downloaded.
• paragraph, rotation_info, allowlist, blocklist, detail, and output_format.
• batch_size and workers for throughput tuning.

References and scripts

• ../../references/api-reference.md for public signatures and return shapes.
• ../../references/cli-reference.md for the CLI flag groups and parser caveats.
• ../../references/configuration.md for cache paths, backend behavior, and language/model rules.
• references/workflows.md for practical OCR examples.
• references/troubleshooting.md for CLI quirks, model-cache issues, and legacy helper caveats.
• scripts/readtext_smoke.py for a tiny OCR run against one image.

Boundary notes

• Keep custom bundle loading, detector compilation, and training guidance in their owning sub-skills.
• Prefer the Python API for exact control when the CLI's current parser quirks make a flag hard to use reliably.