Strip all Markdown formatting and produce clean plain text. Useful for clipboard export, email body fallback, accessibility, and as input to text analysis tools.
Quick Start
node .github/muscles/md-to-txt.cjs source.md output.txt
Options
| Flag | Default | Effect |
|---|---|---|
--wrap N |
80 | Line wrap width (0 = no wrap) |
--strip-frontmatter |
off | Remove YAML frontmatter |
--strip-mermaid |
off | Replace Mermaid blocks with [diagram] |
--strip-images |
off | Replace image refs with alt text |
--no-replace-em-dashes |
em-dashes ARE replaced for txt | Keep — literal |
--strip-decorative-rules |
HRs preserved for txt | Strip decorative --- lines |
Format-Aware Defaults
Plain text gets:
- Em-dash →
,ON. AI-tell em-dashes look bad in monospace fonts. - Decorative HR strip OFF. Pandoc renders
---as visible plain-text dividers, which are usually intentional in txt output.
Override via flags above.
What gets stripped
- Bold, italic, strikethrough markers
- Inline code backticks
- Link URLs (alt text preserved)
- Heading
#markers - Bullet/list markers (indentation preserved)
Related
- lint-clean-markdown — pre-flight the source
-
- md-to-word — for formatted output