PDF to markdown converter

Convert PDF and image documents to clean Markdown via the PDF2Markdown CLI. Use when the user wants to extract text from PDFs, convert PDFs to markdown, parse document structure, or process images (JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP, TIFF, BMP) into structured content. Also use when they say "convert this PDF", "parse this document", "extract text from PDF", "parse async", or "large file" (up to 100MB). Must be pre-installed and authenticated.

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Install

openclaw skills install pdf2markdown

PDF2Markdown CLI

Convert PDF and image documents to Markdown. Supports both pdf2markdown and pdf2md commands.

Run pdf2markdown --help or pdf2md <command> --help for options.

Prerequisites

Install and authenticate. Check with pdf2markdown --status.

pdf2markdown login
# or set PDF2MARKDOWN_API_KEY

If not ready, see rules/install.md. For output handling, see rules/security.md.

Workflow

Need	Command	When
Convert PDF/image	`parse`	File under ~30MB, have path or URL
Large file (async)	`parse-async`	File over ~30MB, or sync returns file_too_large error

Quick start

Parse (sync, ~30MB):

pdf2markdown document.pdf -o .pdf2markdown/output.md
pdf2markdown parse --url "https://example.com/doc.pdf" -o .pdf2markdown/doc.md
pdf2markdown parse file1.pdf file2.png -o .pdf2markdown/

# JSON output
pdf2markdown parse document.pdf --format json -o .pdf2markdown/result.json

Parse-async (large files, up to 100MB):

# Submit and wait
pdf2markdown parse-async large.pdf --wait -o .pdf2markdown/output.md
pdf2markdown parse-async --url "https://cdn.example.com/big.pdf" --wait -o .pdf2markdown/doc.md

# Submit only (poll later)
pdf2markdown parse-async large.pdf  # returns task_id
pdf2markdown parse-async <task_id> --status
pdf2markdown parse-async <task_id> --result -o .pdf2markdown/output.md

Options

Command	Key options
`parse`	`-u, --url`, `-o, --output`, `-f, --format` (markdown, json, all), `--page-images`, `--json`, `--pretty`
`parse-async`	`-u, --url`, `-o, --output`, `--wait`, `--status`, `--result`, `--poll-interval`, `--timeout`

Run pdf2markdown <command> --help for full details.

Output & Organization

Write results to .pdf2markdown/ with -o. Add .pdf2markdown/ to .gitignore.

pdf2markdown document.pdf -o .pdf2markdown/doc.md
pdf2markdown parse file1.pdf file2.pdf -o .pdf2markdown/

Naming: .pdf2markdown/{name}.md. For large outputs, use grep, head, or incremental reads. Always quote URLs — shell interprets ? and & as special characters.

Documentation

PDF2Markdown API Docs