Turn “things” (URLs, PDFs, Word docs, PowerPoints, HTML pages, text files, etc.) into Markdown so they can be inspected/quoted/processed like normal text.
markitdown can fetch URLs by itself; this skill mainly wraps it to make saving + summarizing convenient.
For PDF inputs, use the markitdown[pdf] extra (or the wrapper below, which now does this automatically).
When to use
Use this skill when you need to:
- pull down a web page as a document-like Markdown representation
- convert binary docs (PDF/DOCX/PPTX) into Markdown for analysis
- quickly produce a short summary of a long document before deeper work
Quick usage
Convert a URL or file to Markdown
Run from this skill folder (the agent should cd here first):
uvx --from 'markitdown[pdf]' markitdown <url-or-path>
To write Markdown to a temp file (prints the path) use the wrapper:
node to-markdown.mjs <url-or-path> --tmp
Tip: when summarizing, the script will always write the full converted Markdown to a temp .md file and will always print a final "Hint" line with the path (so you can open/inspect the full content).
Write Markdown to a specific file:
uvx --from 'markitdown[pdf]' markitdown <url-or-path> > /tmp/doc.md
Convert + summarize with haiku-4-5 (pass context!)
Summaries are only useful when you provide what you want extracted and the audience/purpose.
node to-markdown.mjs <url-or-path> --summary --prompt "Summarize focusing on X, for audience Y. Extract Z."
Or:
node to-markdown.mjs <url-or-path> --summary --prompt "Focus on security implications and action items."
This will:
- convert to Markdown via
uvx --from 'markitdown[pdf]' markitdown - write the full Markdown to a temp
.mdfile and print its path as a "Hint" line - run
pi --model claude-haiku-4-5(no-tools, no-session) to summarize using your extra prompt