React PDF to Markdown (Modernized)

The fastest client-side PDF to Markdown converter. Rebuilt for the AI era.

Transform PDFs into clean, structured Markdown directly in the browser. Perfect for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) pipelines, LLM data ingestion, and content migration.

🚀 Live Demo

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⚡ Why This Fork?

This is a complete modernization of the original pdf-to-markdown tool. We moved from a legacy 2017 stack to a cutting-edge 2025 architecture, resulting in significantly faster parsing and a better developer experience.

Performance & Stack Comparison

Metric	Legacy (v0.x)	Modern (v1.0)
Framework	React 15 (Class Components)	React 19 (Hooks/Functional)
Build Tool	Webpack	Vite (Instant HMR)
Language	JavaScript	TypeScript (Strict Mode)
Testing	Mocha/Chai	Vitest
Styling	Bootstrap 3	Tailwind CSS v4
Parsing Speed	~9s (500 pages)	~7s (500 pages) 🚀
PDF Engine	pdf.js v2	pdf.js v5.4

✨ Features

• RAG-Ready Output: Extracts clean structure (headers, lists, tables) optimized for LLM context windows.
• 100% Client-Side: No server required. Your documents never leave the browser.
• Smart Layout Detection: correctly identifies:
  • H1-H6 Headers (based on font size/weight)
  • Complex nested lists
  • Code blocks & Blockquotes
  • Table of Contents
• Debug Mode: Visualise the 12-stage transformation pipeline step-by-step.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• npm or pnpm

Installation

git clone https://github.com/namtroi/pdf-to-markdown.git
cd pdf-to-markdown
npm install

Development

# Start the Vite dev server (Fast HMR)
npm run dev

# Run the test suite (Vitest)
npm run test

# Type-check and build for production
npm run build

🛠 Architecture

The conversion pipeline consists of 12 granular transformation stages:

1. Extract: Raw text & geometry from PDF.js.
2. Structure: Detect headers, list items, and blocks.
3. Refine: Remove repetition, merge lines, detect code blocks.
4. Output: Render final Markdown.

See ARCHITECTURE.md for a deep dive into the logic.

🚧 Current Status & Roadmap

This project is currently maintained by a solo developer. While the core logic is robust and fully typed, we are practically pragmatic about the codebase:

• ✅ Core Pipeline: Fully migrated to TypeScript with strict types.
• ✅ Tests: >77% coverage with Vitest.
• ⚠️ UI Components: You might spot a few @ts-ignore or any types in the legacy view components.

Contributions are welcome! If you're looking for a Good First Issue, helping us kill the last few any types in the UI would be amazing.

🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repo.
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

📜 Credits

• Original Author: Heavily inspired by and forked from jzillmann/pdf-to-markdown. Massive kudos for the original algorithm.
• PDF Engine: Powered by Mozilla's PDF.js.

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.