A command-line tool for turning local documents and media into Markdown, a plain-text format commonly used for notes and documentation. It supports PDFs, Word files, spreadsheets, presentations, images, web pages, text files, and audio.

Converting PDFs, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, CSV, JSON, and images into Markdown, including OCR for images and speech-to-text for audio.

It gives you one way to extract readable text and tables from different file types instead of handling each format separately.

markitdown — Skill for Claude Code by 0xDarkMatter/claude-mods

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add 0xDarkMatter/claude-mods --skill markitdown

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/0xDarkMatter/claude-mods

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install claude-mods, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 112 skills, 3 commands, 3 agents, 4 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/0xdarkmatter/claude-mods/markitdown.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 78 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 800 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits

NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026

How audits are shown

Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.

Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00078	$0.00800
Opus 5.5	$0.00031	$0.00320
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00016	$0.00160
Haiku 4.5	$0.00008	$0.00080

Measured 2mo ago against content hash de29e4dc6cc6, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

markitdown scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2mo ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/markitdown/SKILL.md · 96 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 96 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

markitdown - Document to Markdown

Convert local documents to clean Markdown. One tool for PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, images, and more.

When to Use markitdown

Use Case	Recommendation
Local files (PDF, Word, Excel)	✅ Use markitdown - unique capability
Web pages	❌ Use Jina (`r.jina.ai/`) - 5x faster
Blocked/anti-bot sites	❌ Use Firecrawl
OCR on images	✅ Use markitdown
Audio transcription	✅ Use markitdown

Basic Usage

# Local files (primary use case)
markitdown document.pdf
markitdown report.docx
markitdown data.xlsx
markitdown slides.pptx
markitdown screenshot.png    # OCR

# URLs (works, but Jina is faster)
markitdown https://example.com

# Save output
markitdown document.pdf > document.md

Supported Formats

Format	Extensions	Notes
PDF	`.pdf`	Text extraction, tables
Word	`.docx`	Formatting preserved
Excel	`.xlsx`	Tables to markdown
PowerPoint	`.pptx`	Slides as sections
Images	`.jpg`, `.png`	OCR text extraction
HTML	`.html`	Clean conversion
Audio	`.mp3`, `.wav`	Speech-to-text
Text	`.txt`, `.csv`, `.json`, `.xml`	Pass-through/structure
URLs	`https://...`	Works but slower than Jina

Benchmarked Performance (URLs)

Tool	Avg Speed	Success Rate
Jina	0.5s	10/10
markitdown	2.5s	9/10
Firecrawl	4.5s	10/10

Verdict: For URLs, use Jina. For local files, markitdown is the only option.

Examples

# PDF to markdown (primary use case)
markitdown report.pdf > report.md

# Excel spreadsheet
markitdown financials.xlsx

# Image with text (OCR)
markitdown screenshot.png

# PowerPoint deck
markitdown presentation.pptx > slides.md

# Audio transcription
markitdown meeting.mp3 > transcript.md

Comparison with Alternatives

Task	markitdown	Alternative
PDF text	`markitdown file.pdf`	PyMuPDF, pdfplumber
Word docs	`markitdown file.docx`	python-docx
Excel	`markitdown file.xlsx`	pandas, openpyxl
OCR	`markitdown image.png`	Tesseract
Web pages	Use Jina instead	`r.jina.ai/URL` (5x faster)

Read the full file on GitHub · 96 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

2mo ago First seen · 96 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A de29e4dc6cc6

Subscribe to this mod's changes

markitdown is a skill published in the GitHub repository 0xDarkMatter/claude-mods (79 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 800 once invoked, about $0.0003 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

Claude Code Documents agent-skills ai-tools anthropic claude developer-tools

markitdown next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
markitdown0xDarkMatter/claude-mods	Skill	79	today	MIT	A	78	Claude Code
investment-memo-generatortravisjneuman/.claude	Skill	107	yesterday	MIT	A	37	Claude Code, Codex
impact-report-writertravisjneuman/.claude	Skill	107	yesterday	MIT	A	43	Claude Code, Codex
codebase-documentertravisjneuman/.claude	Skill	107	yesterday	MIT	A	42	Claude Code
agent-documentation-writertravisjneuman/.claude	Skill	107	yesterday	MIT	A	41	Claude Code
video-timelineElumenotion/GuideAnts	Skill	66	3d ago	Apache-2.0	A	81	Claude Code, Codex
transcript-to-pdfElumenotion/GuideAnts	Skill	66	3d ago	Apache-2.0	A	71	Claude Code, Codex