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Document to Markdown

document-to-markdown

Convert PDF, Office, images, HTML, and URLs to Markdown. Use for document conversion, text extraction, OCR, web scraping, RAG pipelines. Triggers: "convert to markdown", "extract text", "read PDF", "scrape URL".

SKILL.md

Full skill instructions

Document to Markdown

Convert documents and URLs to clean Markdown for LLM/​RAG use.

Prerequisites (Auto-handled)

Before running any conversion, check and install dependencies if needed:

# Check if dependencies are installed, install if missing
pip show pymupdf4llm markitdown pyyaml > /​dev/​null 2>&1 || pip install -r ~/​.claude/​skills/​document-to-markdown/​requirements.txt

Run this check automatically before first use. Do not prompt user for installation.

Quick Start

# Single file
python scripts/​gateway.py --input <file_or_url> [--json]

# Batch processing
python scripts/​gateway.py --input-dir <folder> --output-dir <out> [--recursive] [--parallel 4]

Supported Inputs

TypeFormats
DocumentsPDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX
ImagesPNG, JPG, JPEG, WEBP, TIFF
WebHTML (local), URLs (http/​https)
TextTXT, MD, CSV, JSON, XML

Key Options

OptionPurpose
--format humanClean, readable output (default)
--format ragStructured output for LLM/​RAG
--jsonStructured output for agents
--input-dirBatch process entire directory
--output-dirOutput directory for batch mode
--recursiveInclude subdirectories in batch
--parallel NProcess N files concurrently
--frontmatterAdd YAML metadata header
--pdf-backend markerFor scanned PDFs (slow, 1.3GB models)
--pdf-backend paddleocrFor scanned PDFs + Chinese (fast, <10MB)
--table-modeEnable table recognition (requires paddlex[ocr])
--use-gpuGPU acceleration for PaddleOCR
--to-traditionalConvert Simplified to Traditional Chinese
--pages 1-10Convert specific pages only

Workflow

  1. Check dependencies (auto-install if missing)
  2. Run: python scripts/​gateway.py --input <path> --json
  3. Check JSON success field
  4. If warnings present, consider switching backend
  5. Read output file to present content to user

Format Selection

Default: --format human (clean, readable for humans)

Use --format rag when user prompt mentions:

  • "for RAG", "for LLM", "for embedding", "for AI"
  • "vector database", "chunking", "indexing"
  • "給 AI 讀", "餵給模型", "向量資料庫"
FormatOutput Style
human## Title / Name (email) / clean links
rag## **Title** / **Name** _email_ / full metadata

Conditional Logic

IF warning "Complex tables detected":
  → Retry with --pdf-backend marker (slower but better tables)

IF output is empty or very short:
  → Retry with --pdf-backend marker (for scanned PDFs)

IF URL timeout:
  → Increase --url-timeout or use --url-backend markitdown

IF OCR quality poor:
  → Specify --lang for correct language

Output Format

Single file:

{"success": true, "output_path": "doc.md", "backend_used": "pymupdf4llm"}

Batch:

{"success": true, "total": 10, "converted": 9, "failed": 1, "results": [...]}

For backend details, see references/​backends.md. For troubleshooting, see references/​troubleshooting.md.

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