markdown-converter

name	markdown-converter
description	Convert PDF, Office, HTML, data, media, ZIP to Markdown.
user_invocable	false
agent	python-general-engineer
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read"]
routing	{"triggers":["convert to markdown","markitdown","extract text from PDF","PDF to markdown","docx to markdown","ingest document","read this PDF","read this document","extract text from document","convert PDF","convert document","pptx to markdown","xlsx to markdown"],"category":"research","pairs_with":["research-pipeline","enterprise-search"]}

Markdown Converter

Convert a file to Markdown with markitdown, zero install:

uvx 'markitdown[all]' input.pdf -o output.md   # to file
uvx 'markitdown[all]' input.docx               # to stdout
cat blob | uvx 'markitdown[all]' -x .pdf       # stdin, with extension hint

When uvx is missing, run pipx run 'markitdown[all]' … with the same arguments. First run downloads dependencies; later runs hit the cache. Output preserves headings, tables, lists, and links.

For video transcripts, use the video-transcript skill.

Formats

Input	Notes
PDF, .docx, .pptx, .xlsx, .xls	Document structure preserved
HTML, CSV, JSON, XML	Structured Markdown
Images	EXIF metadata + OCR text
Audio	EXIF metadata + speech transcription
ZIP, EPub	Iterates contents, converts each

Options

Flag	Effect
-o FILE	Write output to FILE
-x .EXT	Extension hint for stdin input
-m MIME	MIME-type hint
-c CHARSET	Charset hint, e.g. UTF-8

Error handling

Garbled or empty text from a scanned PDF

Cause: page is an image; the base extractor reads text layers only. Solution: render pages to images (pdftoppm), then convert the images so OCR runs.