Convert almost any document into clean, structure-preserving Markdown using Microsoft's MarkItDown, then either deliver the file or analyze its contents.
When to Use
- User wants a PDF / Word / Excel / PowerPoint / HTML / CSV file as Markdown.
- User wants a folder or ZIP of mixed files turned into one Markdown file.
- User uploads a format you can't read natively and wants its text.
- User asks a question about a non-text file — convert quietly, then answer.
Prerequisites
pip install "markitdown[all]"
Usage
The bundled script handles single files, multiple files, folders, and ZIPs, and keeps going if one file in a batch fails.
# single file -> single .md
python scripts/convert.py report.pdf -o report.md
# folder or ZIP of mixed files -> ONE combined .md
python scripts/convert.py mixed_docs.zip -o combined.md
python scripts/convert.py ./docs -o combined.md
Two Modes
- Convert-and-deliver — user wants the
.md. Convert, hand it over, stop. - Convert-then-analyze — user asks a question about a file. Convert quietly to a temp path, read the Markdown yourself, answer. Don't dump a file.
Combined Output Rules
When more than one document is produced:
- Each document gets a
# <filename>header; documents split by---. - Content headings are demoted one level so
#stays reserved for the file separators (no heading collisions). - The common DOCX empty-header-row table quirk is auto-repaired.
Known Limits
- Scanned/image-only PDFs may come out empty (text-layer extraction, not OCR).
- Plain PDFs carry no heading metadata — titles convert to plain text.
- Audio transcription and YouTube URLs need network access.
Credits
Conversion powered by Microsoft MarkItDown (MIT). Skill by Rinu (l3ad3r1) with Claude (Anthropic). Also published at https://github.com/l3ad3r1/Claude-skills-repo