Markitdown

Microsoft built this to convert documents into Markdown so LLMs can actually work with them. It handles PDFs, Office files, images with OCR, audio transcription, and even YouTube URLs. The Python API is straightforward, and you can optionally pipe in an LLM client for AI-generated image descriptions in presentations. Honestly most useful when you're preprocessing a pile of mixed-format documents for RAG or analysis. Ships with a CLI for quick one-offs and supports Azure Document Intelligence if you need heavy-duty PDF parsing. MIT licensed, installs via pip with granular control over which format dependencies you want.

skills.sh installs: 2.5K
GitHub stars: 33.2K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add davila7/claude-code-templates --skill markitdown --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

MarkItDown - File to Markdown Conversion

Overview

MarkItDown is a Python tool developed by Microsoft for converting various file formats to Markdown. It's particularly useful for converting documents into LLM-friendly text format, as Markdown is token-efficient and well-understood by modern language models.

Key Benefits:

Convert documents to clean, structured Markdown
Token-efficient format for LLM processing
Supports 15+ file formats
Optional AI-enhanced image descriptions
OCR for images and scanned documents
Speech transcription for audio files

Visual Enhancement with Scientific Schematics

When creating documents with this skill, always consider adding scientific diagrams and schematics to enhance visual communication.

If your document does not already contain schematics or diagrams:

Use the scientific-schematics skill to generate AI-powered publication-quality diagrams
Simply describe your desired diagram in natural language
Nano Banana Pro will automatically generate, review, and refine the schematic

SKILL.md on GitHub