Markdown Fetch

Fetch websites and URLs as Markdown. Use to save tokens when reading websites (headings, lists, tables, links), YouTube URLs (transcripts) and PDFs (including stdin with -x or -m hints). If markitdown fails, fall back to curl r.jina.ai/URL or defuddle.md/URL.

You have markitdown[pdf,youtube-transcription] installed.

Reading URLs

1. Convert websites and URLs.

Web page to Markdown:

markitdown 'https://example.com' -o page.md

If MarkItDown fails on a URL, fall back to r.jina.ai or defuddle.md:

curl -fsSL 'https://r.jina.ai/https://example.com' > page.md

curl -fsSL 'https://defuddle.md/example.com' > page.md

YouTube URL to transcript Markdown:

markitdown 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID' -o video.md

2. Convert PDFs.

Convert a file (stdout):

markitdown path/to/file.pdf

Write to a file:

markitdown path/to/file.pdf -o output.md

If reading from stdin, set hints so MarkItDown picks the PDF converter:

cat file | markitdown -x pdf
cat file | markitdown -m application/pdf