Parse messy files
Convert PDFs to markdown
Find skills for PDF parsing, OCR fallback, table extraction, and clean markdown conversion.
Agent prompt
Find the best skill for converting PDF files into clean markdown while preserving headings, tables, and metadata.
Best first install
OCRmyPDF
OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched
Install with one command
$ npx skills add ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDFInstall targets
Install this skill in your agent workflow
Copy the registry command or an agent-specific install prompt for Codex, Claude Code, and Cursor.
OpenAgentSkill CLI
Use the registry command when your workflow supports the OpenAgentSkill installer.
$ npx skills add ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDFDecision guide
Use and avoid conditions
Success criteria
- Handles common PDFs
- Keeps headings and tables usable
- Reports extraction limits
Do not use when
- The PDF is encrypted
- Scanned documents need manual OCR review
- Legal/medical data requires compliance review
Alternatives
Compare before installing
PaddleOCR
971Turn any PDF or image document into structured data for your AI. A powerful, lightweight OCR toolkit that bridges the gap between images/PDFs and LLMs. Supports 100+ languages.
Stirling PDF
936#1 PDF Application on GitHub that lets you edit PDFs on any device anywhere
Docling
932Get your documents ready for gen AI
MinerU
927Transforms complex documents like PDFs and Office docs into LLM-ready markdown/JSON for your Agentic workflows.
Markitdown
924Python tool for converting files and office documents to Markdown.
Pandoc
900Universal markup converter