/markitdown

name: markitdown
description: Convert files and office documents to Markdown. Supports PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, images (with OCR), audio (with transcription), HTML, CSV, JSON, XML, ZIP, YouTube URLs, EPubs and more.
allowed-tools: Read Write Edit Bash
license: MIT license
metadata:
    skill-author: K-Dense Inc.

MarkItDown - File to Markdown Conversion

Overview

MarkItDown is a Python tool developed by Microsoft for converting various file formats to Markdown. It's particularly useful for converting documents into LLM-friendly text format, as Markdown is token-efficient and well-understood by modern language models.

**Key Benefits**:

• Convert documents to clean, structured Markdown
• Token-efficient format for LLM processing
• Supports 15+ file formats
• Optional AI-enhanced image descriptions
• OCR for images and scanned documents
• Speech transcription for audio files

Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics

**When creating documents with this skill, always consider adding scientific diagrams and schematics to enhance visual communication.**

If your document does not already contain schematics or diagrams:

• Use the **scientific-schematics** skill to generate AI-powered publication-quality diagrams
• Simply describe your desired diagram in natural language
• Nano Banana Pro will automatically generate, review, and refine the schematic

**For new documents:** Scientific schematics should be generated by default to visually represent key concepts, workflows, architectures, or relationships described in the text.

**How to generate schematics:**

python scripts/generate_schematic.py "your diagram description" -o figures/output.png

The AI will automatically:

• Create publication-quality images with proper formatting
• Review and refine through multiple iterations
• Ensure accessibility (colorblind-friendly, high contrast)
• Save outputs in the figures/ directory

**When to add schematics:**

• Document conversion workflow diagrams
• File format architecture illustrations
• OCR processing pipeline diagrams
• Integration workflow visualizations
• System architecture diagrams
• Data flow diagrams
• Any complex concept that benefits from visualization

For detailed guidance on creating schematics, refer to the scientific-schematics skill documentation.

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Supported Formats

| Format | Description | Notes | |--------|-------------|-------| | **PDF** | Portable Document Format | Full text extraction | | **DOCX** | Microsoft Word | Tables, formatting preserved | | **PPTX** | PowerPoint | Slides with notes | | **XLSX** | Excel spreadsheets | Tables and data | | **Images** | JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP | EXIF metadata + OCR | | **Audio** | WAV, MP3 | Metadata + transcription | | **HTML** | Web pages | Clean conversion | | **CSV** | Comma-separated values | Table format | | **JSON** | JSON data | Structured representation | | **XML** | XML documents | Structured format | | **ZIP** | Archive files | Iterates contents | | **EPUB** | E-books | Full text extraction | | **YouTube** | Video URLs | Fetch transcriptions |

Quick Start

Installation

# Install with all features
pip install 'markitdown[all]'

# Or from source
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown.git
cd markitdown
pip install -e 'packages/markitdown[all]'

Command-Line Usage

# Basic conversion
markitdown document.pdf > output.md

# Specify output file
markitdown document.pdf -o output.md

# Pipe content
cat document.pdf | markitdown > output.md

# Enable plugins
markitdown --list-plugins  # List available plugins
markitdown --use-plugins document.pdf -o output.md

Python API

from markitdown import MarkItDown

# Basic usage
md = MarkItDown()
result = md.convert("document.pdf")
print(result.text_content)

# Convert from stream
with open("document.pdf", "rb") as f:
    result = md.convert_stream(f, file_extension=".pdf")
    print(result.text_content)

Advanced Features

1. AI-Enhanced Image Descriptions

Use LLMs via OpenRouter to generate detailed image descriptions (for PPTX and image files):

from markitdown import MarkItDown
from openai import OpenAI

# Initialize OpenRouter client (OpenAI-compatible API)
client = OpenAI(
    api_key="your-openrouter-api-key",
    base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1"
)

md = MarkItDown(
    llm_client=client,
    llm_model="anthropic/claude-opus-4.5",  # recommended for scientific vision
    llm_prompt="Describe this image in detail for scientific documentation"
)

result = md.convert("presentation.pptx")
print(result.text_content)

2. Azure Document Intelligence

For enhanced PDF conversion with Microsoft Document Intelligence:

# Command line
markitdown document.pdf -o output.md -d -e "<document_intelligence_endpoint>"

# Python API
from markitdown import MarkItDown

md = MarkItDown(docintel_endpoint="<document_intelligence_endpoint>")
result = md.convert("complex_document.pdf")
print(result.text_content)

3. Plugin System

MarkItDown supports 3rd-party plugins for extending functionality:

# List installed plugins
markitdown --list-plugins

# Enable plugins
markitdown --use-plugins file.pdf -o output.md

Find plugins on GitHub with hashtag: `#markitdown-plugin`

Optional Dependencies

Control which file formats you support:

# Install specific formats
pip install 'markitdown[pdf, docx, pptx]'

# All available options:
# [all]                  - All optional dependencies
# [pptx]                 - PowerPoint files
# [docx]                 - Word documents
# [xlsx]                 - Excel spreadsheets
# [xls]                  - Older Excel files
# [pdf]                  - PDF documents
# [outlook]              - Outlook messages
# [az-doc-intel]         - Azure Document Intelligence
# [audio-transcription]  - WAV and MP3 transcription
# [youtube-transcription] - YouTube video transcription

Common Use Cases

1. Con