docs2llm

Turn documents into LLM-ready Markdown. Local-first, one command, no cloud APIs.

You have a PDF report, a PowerPoint deck, a budget spreadsheet, a web article. You need clean text for Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini. docs2llm converts 75+ formats into structured Markdown with headings, tables, and lists preserved — and counts tokens so you know what fits. It also converts Markdown back to Word, PowerPoint, or HTML when you need to share with people who don't live in a terminal.

Install

# Homebrew (macOS — no Bun required)
brew install al-ignat/tap/docs2llm

# Or download the binary directly from GitHub Releases
# https://github.com/al-ignat/docs2llm/releases

# Or via Bun (requires Bun runtime)
bunx docs2llm                # no install needed
bun install -g docs2llm      # global install

Outbound conversion (Markdown → DOCX/PPTX/HTML) also needs Pandoc (brew install pandoc).

Quick Examples

docs2llm report.pdf                  # PDF → Markdown
docs2llm ./docs/                     # convert an entire folder
docs2llm https://example.com/article # web page → Markdown
docs2llm paste --copy                # clipboard → clean Markdown → clipboard
docs2llm notes.md -f docx            # Markdown → Word document
docs2llm                             # interactive wizard (no args)

Every conversion shows token count and engine used:

✓ report.pdf → report.md (2,340 words, ~3,100 tokens, kreuzberg)

Use It Where You Work

CLI

One command in the terminal. Converts files, folders, URLs, and stdin. Run with no arguments for an interactive wizard that scans your current directory and recent downloads.

Raycast

Six commands with smart auto-detection. Select a file in Finder, hit a keyboard shortcut, get Markdown on your clipboard. Three view commands (Convert File, Convert Clipboard, Quick Convert) and three no-view smart commands (Smart Copy, Smart Paste, Smart Save) that auto-detect your source and conversion direction.

See raycast/README.md for setup.

Web UI

docs2llm open

Drag-and-drop interface at localhost. Drop any file, paste a URL, or Cmd+V from clipboard. Supports inbound and outbound conversion, template selection, and dark theme.

MCP Server

docs2llm serve

Exposes docs2llm as a tool server for Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client. Four tools: convert_file, convert_url, convert_to_document, list_formats.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docs2llm": { "command": "bunx", "args": ["docs2llm", "serve"] }
  }
}

Best For

• Converting work documents (reports, decks, specs, budgets) into prompt-ready text
• Extracting clean article content from web pages and URLs
• Clipboard workflows: copy from browser or email, paste as Markdown
• Batch conversion of document folders
• Exporting Markdown back to Word or PowerPoint for non-technical stakeholders
• Token budgeting for LLM context windows
• Local and private workflows — no data leaves your machine

Not Best For

• Complex PDF tables with merged cells (some structure may be lost)
• Scanned PDFs without Tesseract installed
• Email HTML with heavy templating (footers and unsubscribe links may leak through)
• Replacing dedicated PDF parsing pipelines for production data extraction

Conversion Quality

Quality is measured, not guessed. An evaluation harness runs against real-world documents across 8 format classes:

| Format | Score | |--------|-------| | DOCX / XLSX | 1.0 | | Article HTML | 0.99 | | Webpage HTML | 0.96 | | PPTX | 0.91 | | PDF (digital) | 0.86 | | Email HTML | 0.84 |

Scores are tracked across releases. See eval/ for methodology and fixtures.

Supported Formats

Documents: PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, ODT, ODP, ODS, RTF | Web: URLs, HTML, XML | Email: EML, MSG | Images (OCR): PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, WEBP | eBooks: EPUB, MOBI | Data: CSV, TSV, TXT | Code: most source files

Run docs2llm formats for the full list. Outbound: Markdown → DOCX, PPTX, HTML.

Configuration

docs2llm init              # create config in current directory
docs2llm config            # manage interactively

Example .docs2llm.yaml:

defaults:
  format: docx
  outputDir: ./out

templates:
  report:
    format: docx
    pandocArgs: [--toc, --reference-doc=./templates/report.docx]

See docs/REFERENCE.md for full config schema and template options.

Further Reading

• Full CLI Reference — all commands, options, piping, watch mode, chunking, MCP setup
• Raycast Extension — setup, commands, preferences
• Evaluation Harness — quality methodology and fixtures
• Roadmap — what's next

License

MIT