Agent skill · creative production · github
convert-pdf-to-md
Converts PDF (.pdf) documents into Markdown so their contents can be accurately analyzed, summarized, searched, or extracted from. Use this skill whenever the user shares, references, or asks about a .pdf file — even if they don''t say "convert" or "markdown" explicitly. This includes requests to "read", "summarize", "review", "extract data from", "compare", or "analyze" a PDF report, paper, invoice, form, contract, or scanned document. Always run the bundled conversion script to produce Markdown first; do not attempt to parse PDF content directly or write ad-hoc extraction code. Also use this skill for batch requests involving a whole folder of PDF documents. IMPORTANT: When the user references a folder or set of documents containing multiple file types (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx), invoke ALL three sibling skills — convert-pdf-to-md, convert-word-to-md, and convert-excel-to-md — so no file type is silently skipped.
Why this skill is useful
Adds an executable script for converting PDF documents to Markdown, enabling accurate analysis and extraction of content that the AI cannot generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires markitdown, pip, pymupdf, python installed locally. About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 37,534 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Convert PDF to Markdown When to use this skill Trigger this skill any time there is a .pdf file that needs to be understood or processed — for example, a user attaches a PDF and asks questions about it, wants a summary, wants specific data or tables pulled out, or wants multiple PDFs in a folder processed together. PDF is a layout/print format, not reliably readable as plain text, so always convert it to Markdown first using the script in this skill rather than trying to open or parse the file directly. This skill only supports .pdf — that's MarkItDown's only PDF-family format, so there's no legacy format to worry about here (unlike Word's .doc or Excel's .xls). Mixed file types: When the user references a folder or set of documents containing multiple supported file types (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx), this skill handles only .pdf files. The agent MUST also invoke the sibling skills in parallel: convert-word-to-md for any .docx files convert-excel-to-md for any .xlsx files Never process a folder and silently skip a supported file type. All three skills must be invoked together when mixed types are present. Setup (once per environment) Before the first conversion in a given environment, follow references/setup.md step by step to ensure Python, pip, markitdown, and pymupdf (for image extraction) are installed. Do this proactively rather than guessing whether the environment is ready — the script itself will also fail with a clear pointer back to that file if a dependency turns out to be missing, so it's safe to just try the conversion first if you're reasonably confident setup was already done. Usage The conversion script lives at scripts/convertpdftomd.py. Output structure: MarkItDown's PDF converter extracts text and tables only — it has no concept of embedded images at all. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills github/convert-pdf-to-md