# PDF To Markdown

> PDF To Markdown is an Agent Skill for documents published in the majiayu000/claude-skill-registry repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Convert PDF files to Markdown. Use when extracting text from PDFs, creating editable documentation from PDF reports, or converting PDF content to version-controlled markdown files.

- Skill name: `pdf-to-markdown`
- Category: [Documents](https://www.openparable.com/skill/documents/1)
- Source: https://github.com/majiayu000/claude-skill-registry/blob/HEAD/skills/data/pdf-to-markdown/SKILL.md
- Repository: majiayu000/claude-skill-registry (498 GitHub stars when collected)

## SKILL.md

# pdf-to-markdown

Convert PDF files to Markdown format.

## Installation Required

```bash
cd .claude/skills/pdf-to-markdown
npm install
```

**Dependencies:** `pdf-parse`

## Quick Start

```bash
# Basic conversion
node .claude/skills/pdf-to-markdown/scripts/convert.cjs \
  --file ./document.pdf

# Custom output path
node .claude/skills/pdf-to-markdown/scripts/convert.cjs \
  --file ./doc.pdf \
  --output ./output/doc.md
```

## CLI Options

| Option            | Required | Description                                      |
| ----------------- | -------- | ------------------------------------------------ |
| `--file <path>`   | Yes      | Input PDF file                                   |
| `--output <path>` | No       | Output Markdown path (default: input name + .md) |

## Output Format (JSON)

```json
{
  "success": true,
  "input": "/path/to/input.pdf",
  "output": "/path/to/output.md",
  "wordCount": 1523,
  "warnings": ["Tables may not be accurately converted"]
}
```

## Supported Elements

- Text extraction from digital PDFs
- Headings (detected by font size heuristics)
- Paragraphs
- Basic lists
- Links (when embedded in PDF)

## Known Limitations

- **Tables**: Very limited support; may not render correctly
- **Multi-column layouts**: Text may interleave between columns
- **Scanned PDFs**: NOT supported (requires OCR - see alternatives below)
- **Images**: NOT extracted (PDF images are not included in output)
- **Complex formatting**: May be simplified or lost
- **Password-protected PDFs**: NOT supported

## Alternatives for Unsupported Cases

**For scanned PDFs (OCR needed):**

- Use `scribe.js-ocr` library (AGPL license)
- Commercial OCR services (Google Cloud Vision, AWS Textract)

**For complex tables:**

- Consider AI-based extraction (LLM post-processing)
- Manual review and correction

**For image extraction:**

- Use `unpdf` library with `sharp` for image extraction
- Process images separately and reference in markdown

## Troubleshooting

**Dependencies not found:** Run `npm install` in skill directory
**Empty output:** PDF may be scanned/image-based (requires OCR)
**Garbled text:** PDF may use embedded fonts not supported by parser
**Memory issues:** Large PDFs may require `--max-old-space-size=4096` flag

## IMPORTANT Task Planning Notes
- Always plan and break many small todo tasks
- Always add a final review todo task to review the works done at the end to find any fix or enhancement needed

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Source: https://www.openparable.com/skill/documents/pdf-to-markdown (OpenParable). Cite the canonical URL above.