anydoc README

The project's README from github.com/firecrawl/anydoc. As one markdown file: README.md.

anydoc

Crates.io npm PyPI License: MIT skills.sh

Fast Rust library that converts documents (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, CSV, and PDF) into clean GitHub-Flavored Markdown. Includes bindings for Node.js, Python, and the browser (WebAssembly).

Built by Firecrawl to turn any office document into LLM-ready Markdown in single-digit milliseconds, with one consistent output no matter which format goes in. It powers Firecrawl Parse, so if you'd rather not run it yourself, the hosted API gives you the same conversion plus our OCR models for the scanned pages anydoc can't read on its own.

Try it in your browser: the demo page runs the library as WebAssembly, so files are converted locally and never leave your machine.

Quick start

Agent skill

anydoc ships as an Agent Skill, so your agent can read any document it runs into:

npx skills add firecrawl/anydoc

The skill teaches the agent to convert documents with the anydoc CLI. Works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode, and any other compatible agent.

CLI

npx @firecrawl/anydoc report.docx               # Markdown to stdout
npx @firecrawl/anydoc slides.pptx -o slides.md  # or to a file
npx @firecrawl/anydoc - --format csv < data.csv # read stdin
npx @firecrawl/anydoc scan.pdf --ocr hosted     # scanned pages via Firecrawl Parse

npx downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform on first run. For a permanent anydoc command, install globally with npm install -g @firecrawl/anydoc. Run anydoc --help for all options.

Node.js

npm install @firecrawl/anydoc

import { toDocument, toMarkdown, toMarkdownBytes } from '@firecrawl/anydoc';

// From a file path:
const markdown = await toMarkdown('report.docx');

// To enable OCR:
const markdown = await toMarkdown('report.docx', { ocr: 'hosted' );

// From bytes, with the format detected from the content:
const fromBytes = await toMarkdownBytes(bytes);

// Or name it, which signature-less formats (CSV) need:
const fromCsv = await toMarkdownBytes(bytes, 'csv');

// Or stop at the document model, which also carries embedded assets:
const document = await toDocument(bytes);

Full API reference: node/README.md

Python

pip install firecrawl-anydoc

import anydoc

# From a file path:
markdown = anydoc.to_markdown("report.docx")

# To enable OCR:
markdown = anydoc.to_markdown("report.docx", ocr="hosted")

# From bytes, with the format detected from the content:
markdown = anydoc.to_markdown_bytes(data)

# Or name it, which signature-less formats (CSV) need:
markdown = anydoc.to_markdown_bytes(data, "csv")

# Or stop at the document model, which also carries embedded assets:
document = anydoc.to_document(data)

Full API reference: python/README.md

Browser (WebAssembly)

npm install @firecrawl/anydoc-wasm

import init, { toMarkdownBytes, toDocument } from '@firecrawl/anydoc-wasm';

await init();

// From bytes, with the format detected from the content:
const markdown = toMarkdownBytes(bytes);

// Or name it, which signature-less formats (CSV) need:
const fromCsv = toMarkdownBytes(bytes, 'csv');

// Or stop at the document model, which also carries embedded assets:
const document = toDocument(bytes);

Full API reference: wasm/README.md

Rust

cargo add anydoc

// From a file path:
let markdown = anydoc::to_markdown("report.docx")?;

// From bytes, with the format detected from the content:
let markdown = anydoc::to_markdown_bytes(&bytes, None)?;

// Or name it, which signature-less formats (CSV) need:
let markdown = anydoc::to_markdown_bytes(&bytes, anydoc::Format::Csv)?;

// Or stop at the document model, which also carries embedded assets:
let document = anydoc::to_document(&bytes, None)?;

OCR

anydoc reads text-based PDFs locally but does no OCR, so a PDF with scanned or image-only pages fails with NeedsOcr. Opt in and those documents go to Firecrawl Parse, which OCRs them and returns the same Markdown. No signup needed; set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY for higher limits.

Opt in Key, else FIRECRAWL_API_KEY
CLI anydoc scan.pdf --ocr hosted --api-key <key>
Node toMarkdown('scan.pdf', { ocr: 'hosted' }) apiKey
Python anydoc.to_markdown("scan.pdf", ocr="hosted") api_key

Only documents that need OCR leave the machine, and the whole document goes, since Parse has no page selection. If Parse cannot convert it, Node rejects with code: 'hosted' and Python raises HostedError. --api-url, apiUrl and api_url, else FIRECRAWL_API_URL, point at another Parse deployment. The Rust crate has no ocr option and never makes network calls.

Features

Supported formats

Format Extensions
Word .doc, .docx, .docm
PowerPoint .ppt, .pps, .pot, .pptx, .pptm, .ppsx, .ppsm
Excel .xls, .xlsx, .xlsm, .xlsb
OpenDocument .odt, .ods, .odp
Rich Text Format .rtf
EPUB .epub
CSV .csv
PDF .pdf

Benchmark

anydoc is measured against six other converters on 100 real-world documents spanning fourteen formats. Scores run from 0 to 100, higher is better; speed is the median time to convert one document.

tool formats median ms docs judged score completeness structure formatting cleanliness
anydoc 14/14 4.4 94 81 87 79 78 81
libreoffice 12/14 1129.5 87 40 59 42 40 24
unstructured 8/14 572.9 58 63 76 59 51 63
markitdown 6/14 134.8 33 65 78 66 60 52
pandoc 5/14 102.1 34 56 74 57 56 38
docling 4/14 513.6 21 57 60 60 57 51
mammoth 1/14 52.5 8 70 84 71 75 51

Per format, like for like:

format anydoc libreoffice unstructured markitdown pandoc docling mammoth
doc 87 57 67 - - - -
docm 84 48 - - - - -
docx 88 56 53 71 68 71 70
epub 77 - 72 72 52 - -
odp 86 23 - - - - -
ods 82 38 - - - - -
odt 80 51 68 - 60 - -
ppt 80 26 - - - - -
pptx 74 24 - 66 - 52 -
rtf 88 53 46 - 45 - -
xls 80 38 66 62 - - -
xlsm 76 32 - - - - -
xlsx 72 30 66 55 - 47 -

How quality was scored: an LLM judge (Claude Sonnet 5) compares two tools' outputs blind against ground truth: the document's first six pages, rendered to images by LibreOffice. Each output is scored on completeness, structure, formatting, and cleanliness. Every pair is judged twice with the outputs swapped to cancel position bias, for 482 verdicts in total. Each tool's score averages its per-format scores over the formats it supports, so a corpus heavy in one format can't skew it. It also means each row averages a different set of formats (mammoth's 69 is docx alone, while anydoc's 81 spans all fourteen), so the per-format table is the fair comparison.

Speed is one warm conversion per document on a Ryzen 9 9950X3D (Windows 11, 64 GB DDR5-6400). anydoc and the Python libraries are timed with process spawn excluded; the CLI tools include it, since that is how they are used. The harness lives in bench/; the corpus is not redistributable and is not in the repo.

Best fit: pipelines that receive a mixed bag of office documents and need one consistent, structured Markdown output. In this comparison, anydoc was the only tool to cover all fourteen formats, scored highest on every judged format, and converted documents an order of magnitude faster than the next-fastest tool.

Format detection

The format is read from the file content, using the marker its specification designates: the PDF header, the RTF open group, OLE stream names, the ZIP package mimetype and content types. CSV has no such marker, so the extension or an explicit format names it instead.

Format::from_bytes(&bytes); // Some(Format::Docx), or None when nothing matches
Format::from_extension("pptm"); // Some(Format::Pptx)
Format::from_path(Path::new("report.odt")); // Some(Format::Odt)

The same three functions exist in Node (formatFromBytes, ...) and Python (anydoc.format_from_bytes, ...).

Errors

A conversion returns Err only when no complete Markdown could come out of the file. ConvertError names what went wrong:

match anydoc::to_markdown(path) {
    Ok(markdown) => Some(markdown),
    // No document comes out of these, so record the file and take the next one.
    Err(
        error @ (ConvertError::Encrypted
        | ConvertError::Unsupported(_)
        | ConvertError::NeedsOcr { .. }),
    ) => {
        unconverted.push((path, error));
        None
    }
    Err(error) => return Err(error),
}
Variant Meaning
Unsupported Unknown format, or one that cannot be converted
NeedsOcr Scanned or image-only pages of a PDF, listed in pages
Malformed Structurally unusable: no meaningful content could be extracted
Encrypted Encrypted or password-protected
ResourceLimit Crossed a fixed safety limit (decompression, nesting, node count)
MissingPart A part required for any meaningful output is absent
Io The file could not be read, from to_markdown only

Node and wasm publish the variant name on error.code; Python raises one anydoc.ConvertError subclass per variant, or OSError when the file cannot be read.

anydoc converts locally and does not do OCR, so a PDF with scanned pages fails with NeedsOcr. Opt in with ocr: 'hosted' in Node, ocr="hosted" in Python or --ocr hosted on the CLI to send that document to Firecrawl Parse. No signup needed. Set FIRECRAWL_API_KEY for higher limits.

How it works

document bytes
  │
  ├─► format detection      → content markers, not the extension
  │
  ├─► format parser          → one per format (doc, docx, ppt, pptx, xls,
  │                            xlsx, odt/ods/odp, rtf, epub, csv)
  │         │
  │         └─► Document     → shared model: blocks, inlines, tables,
  │                            footnotes, assets
  │               │
  │               └─► GFM serializer → Markdown
  │
  └─► PDF → pdf-inspector    → Markdown directly

Because every format funnels through the same document model and serializer, output quirks get fixed once. A table-escaping fix for docx is automatically a table-escaping fix for rtf, odt, and everything else.

Development

cargo test
cd node && npm install && npm run build && npm test
cd python && pip install maturin && maturin develop && python -m unittest discover -s tests
wasm-pack build wasm --release --target web --scope firecrawl && node --test wasm/test.mjs  # see wasm/README.md

A committed fixture corpus under tests/fixtures/ is snapshot-tested, tests/robustness.rs mutation-tests every fixture, and fuzz/ carries cargo-fuzz targets per format. The speed and quality benchmark lives in bench/.

Releases are tagged v<version>, which publishes the crate, the npm package, and the PyPI wheels from .github/workflows/release.yml. The version lives in three places, bumped together for a release:

License

MIT

anydoc (firecrawl/anydoc)

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22.9K ·GitHub
Anydoc
What is this?A fast Rust library that turns office documents — Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, CSV and PDF — into clean GitHub-Flavored Markdown, built by Firecrawl. Node.js, Python and browser (WebAssembly) bindings are included.
Is it a library I call from code, or a command-line tool?Both: a Rust crate, Node.js, Python and browser (WebAssembly) bindings, plus a CLI you can run with npx. It also ships as an Agent Skill so coding agents can convert documents themselves.
How do I convert my first document?Run npx @firecrawl/anydoc — the prebuilt binary downloads on first run — or install it permanently with npm install -g @firecrawl/anydoc. The Node and Python packages expose the same conversion as an API.
Do I need to install anything else to run it?No. It is pure Rust with no ML models and no external services; the CLI comes as a prebuilt binary for your platform, and the Node and Python packages are self-contained.
Are there documents it will refuse to convert?Scanned or image-only PDFs: it does no OCR locally, so they fail with a NeedsOcr error unless you opt into hosted OCR via Firecrawl Parse. Encrypted and malformed files also return typed errors instead of garbage.
My app receives random office files — is this the right tool?Yes, that is its stated best fit: pipelines that receive a mixed bag of office documents and need one consistent, structured Markdown output. Coding agents are the other target audience, via the bundled Agent Skill.
Do my documents get uploaded anywhere?Not by default — conversion is local, and the browser demo runs as WebAssembly so files never leave your machine. Only a PDF you explicitly send for hosted OCR goes to Firecrawl Parse, and it goes whole since there is no page selection.
Is it free, including for commercial use?MIT-licensed, so yes. The optional hosted OCR needs no signup either — setting FIRECRAWL_API_KEY just raises the limits.
Which document formats does it cover?Fourteen: Word (.doc, .docx, .docm), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx and friends), Excel (.xls, .xlsx, .xlsb), OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp), RTF, EPUB, CSV and PDF. In the project benchmark it was the only converter covering all of them.
How does it compare to pandoc or markitdown?On the project benchmark of 100 real documents anydoc scored 81 vs 56 for pandoc and 65 for markitdown, handled all 14 formats (pandoc 5, markitdown 6), and was far faster: 4.4ms median vs 102ms.
What survives into the Markdown output?Full structure: headings with anchors, tables with merged cells, nested and task lists with the source numbering, footnotes, speaker notes, and equations as LaTeX math. Images become their alt text; the raw bytes stay on the document model.
How do I let my coding agent use it?Run npx skills add firecrawl/anydoc. The skill teaches the agent to convert files with the anydoc CLI and works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and other compatible agents.
What are similar projects?dsh-univer-office, liteparse, MiniPdf, SenseNova-Skills, pdf-inspector, docling, marker, ReLaXed
Which topics is it in?powerpoint, word, docx, converter, excel, csv, ocr, document-processing, wasm, pdf, markdown, rust
Creator
firecrawl
Size
0.8 MB
Stars
22.9K
Updated
CommitAug 28Releasev0.2.4Aug 27
Age
2mo
Commits · 90 Days