pdf-to-markdown

Convert PDF files to Markdown format.

Installation Required cd .claude/skills/pdf-to-markdown npm install

Dependencies: pdf-parse

Quick Start

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 Yes Input PDF file --output No Output Markdown path (default: input name + .md) Output Format (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