When to use: You need to discuss specifics from a PDF and don't want to copy-paste pages.
Flow
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Convert
Use markitdown. Convert ~/Downloads/whitepaper.pdf to Markdown. Tell me total length and section count.✓ Copied
→ Markdown returned with TOC summary
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Discuss specifics
From section 3, what claims do they make about throughput? Quote the exact lines.✓ Copied
→ Direct quotes with section refs
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Compare to another doc
Now convert competitor.pdf the same way. Compare their throughput claims.✓ Copied
→ Per-doc table of claims
Outcome: Two PDFs ingested, compared, and quotable in chat.
Pitfalls
- Scanned PDFs come out empty — MarkItDown does basic OCR — for image-only PDFs, run OCR upstream first
When to use: Article is dynamically rendered or paywalled; you want structured output, not raw HTML.
Flow
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Fetch and convert
Use markitdown to convert https://example.com/long-article. Strip nav and footer.✓ Copied
→ Article body in Markdown
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Summarize or quote
Give me the core claim and the strongest evidence cited.✓ Copied
→ Structured summary
Outcome: URL turned into reasoning-grade Markdown.
Pitfalls
- JS-heavy SPAs return empty — Use a browser-based MCP (browser-act, mcp-chrome) for SPAs, then pipe to markitdown
When to use: You have a Dropbox/SharePoint folder of mixed docs and want them all readable.
Flow
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Inventory
List ~/docs/ — group by extension. How many PDFs, DOCXs, PPTXs?✓ Copied
→ Per-extension counts
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Convert all
Convert every doc in ~/docs/ to Markdown into ~/docs-md/. Preserve folder structure.✓ Copied
→ Mirror tree with .md files
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Index for retrieval
Now give me a single index.md listing each doc's title and 2-line summary.✓ Copied
→ Knowledge-base index file
Outcome: Mixed-format folder turned into a homogeneous Markdown corpus.