file-converter_skill

Overview

This skill converts and transforms files across images, markup, and data formats with single-file and batch support. It streamlines common tasks like image resizing and format conversion, markdown to PDF/HTML generation, and bidirectional data format transforms. Cross-platform utilities and consistent CLI patterns make it suitable for automation in build and documentation pipelines.

How this skill works

Each script follows a consistent CLI pattern: single file or directory/glob input with an optional output directory and explicit format flags. Image tools use Pillow (optional pillow-heif) for conversions, resizing, fit modes and EXIF fixes. Markdown and HTML scripts render and convert using markdown, weasyprint/pdfkit and markdownify/bs4. Data converters rely on format-specific libs (pyyaml, tomli-w, xmltodict) to translate between CSV/JSON/YAML/TOML/XML. Base64 and encoding utilities support stdin/stdout and sensible error handling.

When to use it

• Convert photos to web-friendly formats (WebP/AVIF) and generate thumbnails in bulk
• Generate PDF reports or HTML sites from markdown with selectable themes
• Transform CSV exports into JSON/YAML/TOML for API imports or config migration
• Convert SVG icons to multiple raster sizes or embed rasters into SVG wrappers
• Encode or decode files as base64 data URIs for embedding
• Detect and fix text encoding issues or batch-convert files to UTF-8

Best practices

• Install only the deps needed per task to keep environments lean (see per-task deps)
• Use batch mode with --output-dir to avoid accidental overwrites on single-file runs
• Prefer weasyprint when available for Markdown->PDF; fallback to pdfkit only if wkhtmltopdf is installed
• Use explicit --format flags for ambiguous batch inputs (directories/globs)
• Test transforms on a small sample before running large batches to validate fit modes and error modes

Example use cases

• Web optimization: convert photos to WebP at 1200px and create 300px cover thumbnails for a site
• Docs pipeline: render a docs directory to HTML with a GitHub theme and output a PDF book using the report theme
• Data migration: convert legacy CSV exports into JSON for ingestion into a modern API
• Icon generation: produce multi-size raster icons from a single SVG for mobile and web assets
• Repair text corpora: detect mixed encodings and convert files to UTF-8 with replace/ignore strategies