| name | markdown-converter |
| description | Convert documents and files to useful Markdown using the installed markitdown and markit CLIs. Use when converting PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx, .xls), HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, images, audio, ZIP archives, YouTube URLs, or EPubs to Markdown, when choosing between markit and markitdown for better extraction quality, when comparing PDF extraction results, or when OCR may be needed for scanned or image-heavy PDFs. |
Markdown Converter
Convert files to useful Markdown using the installed markitdown and markit CLIs.
Route First
- Use
markitdown first for .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .xls, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, images, audio, ZIP, YouTube, EPUB, and most non-PDF formats.
- Use
markitdown first for email-like, letter-like, or mostly linear-prose PDFs.
- Use
markit -q first for table-heavy, form-like, or multi-column PDFs where layout matters.
- Use
markitdown --use-plugins for scanned or image-heavy PDFs only when the environment already has a working OpenAI-compatible vision client/model configured for MarkItDown OCR.
- Fall back to plain
markitdown and say OCR is unavailable when that OCR configuration is missing.
Retry Or Compare
- Do not run both tools by default.
- Run the other tool when the first output is high-value and suspect, or when the user explicitly asks to compare.
- Treat these as suspect: flattened tables, broken reading order, repeated headers or footers, near-empty output, clearly jumbled text, or giant
data:image blocks.
- For DOCX, prefer
markitdown when markit emits base64-heavy Markdown.
Commands
markitdown input.docx > output.md
markitdown input.pdf > output.md
markit -q input.pdf > output.md
markitdown --use-plugins input.pdf > output.md
markitdown input.pdf > /tmp/markitdown.md
markit -q input.pdf > /tmp/markit.md
Output Rule
- Return the chosen Markdown, not two full outputs.
- If both tools were run, state which tool won and why in one short sentence.
