git:20260611.9152462 to git:20260705.380563c

---

name: markdown-converter

description: "Convert PDF, Office, HTML, data, media, ZIP to Markdown."

user_invocable: false # default -- router-dispatched, not user-typed

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"

category: research

pairs_with:

- research-pipeline

- enterprise-search

---

# Markdown Converter

Convert a file to Markdown with markitdown, zero install:

```bash

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.