markitdown_skill

Overview

This skill converts local documents into clean, readable Markdown using the markitdown CLI. It handles PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images (with OCR), and audio transcription without requiring code. Use it when you need fast, reliable local file conversion into Markdown for notes, publishing, or downstream processing.

How this skill works

markitdown inspects the input file type and applies format-specific extraction: text and tables from PDFs and Office files, slide sections from PPTX, OCR for images, and speech-to-text for audio. It outputs structured Markdown with headings, lists, and tables where appropriate. For web URLs it can fetch and convert pages, but local file handling is its core strength and is optimized for fidelity over raw crawling speed.

When to use it

• Convert local PDFs, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX to Markdown
• Extract OCR text from screenshots, scanned images, or photos
• Transcribe local audio files (MP3, WAV) into Markdown transcripts
• Quickly convert structured spreadsheets into Markdown tables
• When you want a single CLI tool to handle many document formats locally

Best practices

• Run markitdown on local copies of files to avoid network overhead and improve reliability
• Redirect output to a .md file (markitdown file.pdf > file.md) to preserve results and allow edits
• For complex tables or heavy layout, review the Markdown and adjust formatting manually after conversion
• Prefer markitdown for local documents; use a dedicated web crawler (Jina) for faster URL scraping
• When OCR is critical, provide high-quality images (clear text, high resolution) for better results

Example use cases

• Convert meeting PDFs and slide decks into editable Markdown notes
• Turn exported Excel reports into Markdown tables for documentation or blogging
• Extract text from scanned receipts or screenshots using OCR for expense tracking
• Transcribe recorded interviews or meetings to generate searchable Markdown transcripts
• Batch-convert a project folder of DOCX and PPTX files into Markdown for migration or archival