markitdown

A file-conversion tool that turns documents, spreadsheets, presentations, web pages, data files, and images into Markdown text. Markdown is plain text with simple formatting that language models can process.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when an agent needs to read, summarize, or analyze files on disk, including PDFs, Word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, images, CSV, JSON, HTML, and more.
Why use it?
It removes the need to open each file type with a separate program or manually copy its contents. It can also extract text from images using OCR, which means reading text from a picture.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/markus-global/markus/markitdown
Any agent
npx skills add markus-global/markus --skill markitdown
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/markus-global/markus

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 25 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 497 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
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.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00025 $0.00497
Opus 5 $0.00013 $0.00249
Sonnet 5 $0.00005 $0.00099
Haiku 4.5 $0.00003 $0.00050

Measured 3d ago against content hash 72f3f67cd9eb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, 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 3d 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.

templates/skills/markitdown/SKILL.md · 57 lines

What it actually says

MarkItDown File Converter

You have access to the MarkItDown MCP tool (markitdown__convert_to_markdown) for converting files to Markdown.

When to use

Use this tool when:

  • The user asks you to read, analyze, or summarize a document (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
  • You need to extract text content from an image (OCR)
  • The user shares a file path and wants you to understand its contents
  • You are working with a file format that your text tools cannot directly read

Note: For images attached directly in chat, the system automatically handles conversion when your model doesn't support vision. This skill is for converting files on disk that you encounter during tasks.

Supported formats

MarkItDown supports 29+ file formats including:

  • Documents: PDF, Word (.docx), PowerPoint (.pptx), Excel (.xlsx/.xls)
  • Images: JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP (EXIF metadata + OCR)
  • Web: HTML, XML
  • Data: CSV, JSON
  • Other: ZIP (iterates contents), EPUB, Outlook messages (.msg)

Usage

markitdown__convert_to_markdown({ uri: "file:///path/to/document.pdf" })

The tool accepts a file URI and returns the content converted to Markdown format.

Prerequisites

MarkItDown requires Python 3.10+ and the markitdown package:

pip install 'markitdown[all]'

Or install only specific format support:

pip install 'markitdown[pdf,docx,pptx]'

Best practices

  1. Check file existence first: Verify the file path is valid before attempting conversion.
  2. Large files: For very large documents, the converted markdown may be lengthy. Summarize key sections for the user rather than dumping everything.
  3. Image OCR quality: OCR results depend on image clarity. Mention if text extraction seems incomplete.
  4. Fallback: If conversion fails (e.g., markitdown not installed), inform the user and suggest installing with pip install 'markitdown[all]'.
Files

What ships with it

1 file 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.

  1. 3d ago First seen · 57 lines · 25 tokens per session scan A 72f3f67cd9eb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

markitdown is a skill published in the GitHub repository markus-global/markus (157 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 25 tokens to every session and 497 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 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.

Related

Other skills, from other repositories

docx

Create and edit Microsoft Word (.docx) documents to a professional standard — reports, proposals, contracts, letters, memos — with custom styles, multi-level lists, styled/merged tables, headers/footers, table of contents, hyperlinks, footnotes, tracked changes and comments. Use when the user asks Brigade to make…

spinabot/brigade · 90 tokens

pdf

Create and edit PDFs to a professional standard — generate from content, draw vector/precise layouts, embed custom (incl. CJK/Unicode) fonts, CREATE and fill AcroForm fields (text/checkbox/radio/dropdown), flatten, merge/split/rotate, stamp/watermark, encrypt, and extract text. Use when the user asks Brigade to make a…

spinabot/brigade · 97 tokens

xlsx

Build and edit professional Excel (.xlsx) spreadsheets, workbooks, and simple financial models — live formulas, number/date/currency formats, cell styling, conditional formatting, data-validation dropdowns, named ranges, frozen panes, merged cells, multi-sheet. Use when the user asks Brigade to make, fill, update…

spinabot/brigade · 79 tokens

ppt-planner

Read only after ppt-router chooses CREATE or OUTLINE. Planning is the source of truth for construction, not optional prose around the deck.

Orkas-AI/Orkas · 3 tokens

ppt-review

Read this skill only after current officereview structural output and relevant rendered images exist. Do not use source code, a tool success flag, or the first-slide preview as a substitute for deck evidence.

Orkas-AI/Orkas · 2 tokens

material-organizer

Organize only the materials the user has already provided or explicitly pointed to. The job is to make messy inputs easier to scan, reuse, archive, or continue from later while preserving source traceability.

Orkas-AI/Orkas · 3 tokens