markitdown

name markitdown description Convert local documents to Markdown using Microsoft's markitdown CLI. Best for: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images (OCR), audio. Can fetch URLs but Jina is faster for web. Triggers on: convert to markdown, read PDF, parse document, extract text from, docx, xlsx, pptx, OCR image, local file. license MIT compatibility Requires markitdown. Install: pip install markitdown allowed-tools Bash metadata {"author":"claude-mods"} markitdown - Document to Markdown Convert local documents to clean Markdown. One tool for PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, and more. When to Use markitdown Use Case Recommendation Local files (PDF, Word, Excel) ✅ Use markitdown - unique capability Web pages ❌ Use Jina ( r.jina.ai/ ) - 5x faster Blocked/anti-bot sites ❌ Use Firecrawl OCR on images ✅ Use markitdown Audio transcription ✅ Use markitdown Basic Usage # Local files (primary use case) markitdown document.pdf markitdown report.docx markitdown data.xlsx markitdown slides.pptx markitdown screenshot.png # OCR # URLs (works, but Jina is faster) markitdown https://example.com # Save output markitdown document.pdf > document.md Supported Formats Format Extensions Notes PDF .pdf Text extraction, tables Word .docx Formatting preserved Excel .xlsx Tables to markdown PowerPoint .pptx Slides as sections Images .jpg , .png OCR text extraction HTML .html Clean conversion Audio .mp3 , .wav Speech-to-text Text .txt , .csv , .json , .xml Pass-through/structure URLs https://... Works but slower than Jina Benchmarked Performance (URLs) Tool Avg Speed Success Rate Jina 0.5s 10/10 markitdown 2.5s 9/10 Firecrawl 4.5s 10/10 Verdict : For URLs, use Jina. For local files, markitdown is the only option. Examples # PDF to markdown (primary use case) markitdown report.pdf > report.md # Excel spreadsheet markitdown financials.xlsx # Image with text (OCR) markitdown screenshot.png # PowerPoint deck markitdown presentation.pptx > slides.md # Audio transcription markitdown meeting.mp3 > transcript.md Comparison with Alternatives Task markitdown Alternative PDF text markitdown file.pdf PyMuPDF, pdfplumber Word docs markitdown file.docx python-docx Excel markitdown file.xlsx pandas, openpyxl OCR markitdown image.png Tesseract Web pages Use Jina instead r.jina.ai/URL (5x faster) markitdown's advantage : One CLI for all local document formats. No code needed.