md-to-txt

name	md-to-txt
description	Strip Markdown formatting and produce clean plain text via pandoc
lastReviewed	2026-05-26T00:00:00.000Z

Md To Txt

Strip all Markdown formatting and produce clean plain text. Useful for clipboard export, email body fallback, accessibility, and as input to text analysis tools.

Quick Start

node .github/skills/md-to-txt/scripts/md-to-txt.cjs source.md output.txt

Options

Flag	Default	Effect
--wrap N	80	Line wrap width (0 = no wrap)
--strip-frontmatter	off	Remove YAML frontmatter
--strip-mermaid	off	Replace Mermaid blocks with [diagram]
--strip-images	off	Replace image refs with alt text
--no-replace-em-dashes	em-dashes ARE replaced for txt	Keep — literal
--strip-decorative-rules	HRs preserved for txt	Strip decorative --- lines

Format-Aware Defaults

Plain text gets:

• Em-dash → , ON. AI-tell em-dashes look bad in monospace fonts.
• Decorative HR strip OFF. Pandoc renders --- as visible plain-text dividers, which are usually intentional in txt output.

Override via flags above.

What gets stripped

• Bold, italic, strikethrough markers
• Inline code backticks
• Link URLs (alt text preserved)
• Heading # markers
• Bullet/list markers (indentation preserved)

Related

• lint-clean-markdown — pre-flight the source
• md-to-word — for formatted output

Would Revise If

Revisit this skill by 2026-08-26 (90 days) or sooner if any of the following fires: pandoc upstream changes plain-text output in a way that breaks the documented "stripped" list; the heuristic for indentation preservation produces wrong output on a real source the user converts; or a heir needs a stripped-but-not-plain output (e.g., RTF, SRT) that this skill doesn't cover — split into a sibling skill instead.