CLI

The same binary is a command-line converter, like MarkItDown but much faster. Install it with npm install -g @sylphx/anymd, or run it once with npx -y @sylphx/anymd <file>.

anymd report.pdf > report.md                 # a file
anymd deck.pptx notes.docx budget.xlsx        # several files, each with a header
anymd https://example.com/article            # a web page (main content only)
cat scan.png | anymd - --ocr                 # stdin, with OCR
anymd paper.pdf --pages 1-3 --max-tokens 4000
anymd search "indemnification" contracts/ --glob '*.pdf'
anymd doctor                                 # lists the optional tools anymd found

Commands

Command	What it does
anymd <file|url|dir>... [options]	Convert to Markdown on stdout
anymd - [options]	Convert stdin (the format is detected from the bytes)
anymd search <query> [path|url...]	Search files and directories (default: .)
anymd mcp [--allow-dir=<path>]...	Run the MCP server on stdio
anymd doctor	Print the version and which optional tools were found

With no file arguments and a piped stdin (which is how MCP clients launch it), anymd serves MCP over stdio, so npx -y @sylphx/anymd works as both a CLI and a server.

Read options

Option	Description
-p, --pages <spec>	Pages, slides, sheets, or chapters, e.g. 1-5,8
-o, --output <file>	Write to a file instead of stdout
--max-tokens <n>	Stop at a token budget and print a cursor. The CLI has no budget unless you set one.
--cursor <cursor>	Continue from a cursor
--ocr / --no-ocr	Force or disable OCR (default: automatic when tesseract is installed)
--transcript	Transcribe audio/video with a local whisper.cpp
--download-whisper-model	Download the ggml whisper model on first use (implies --transcript; see Transcripts)
--front-matter	Print the source/title/pages header (always on for several inputs)

Search options

Option	Description
--mode <m>	auto (default), literal, or ranked (BM25)
--glob <glob>	Only files matching the glob, e.g. '*.pdf'
--max <n>	Maximum hits (default 20)
-i, --case-sensitive	Match case
-w, --whole-word	Match whole words

Other flags

Option	Description
--allow-dir=<path>	Confine file access to this directory (repeatable). See Security.
-h, --help	Show help
-V, --version	Show the version

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Success
1	An input could not be read, or the output could not be written
2	Usage error (unknown option, missing value, no input)

Examples

Convert a folder of reports into Markdown files:

for f in reports/*.pdf; do anymd "$f" -o "${f%.pdf}.md"; done

Read a long PDF in chunks:

anymd book.pdf --max-tokens 8000            # ends with: Continue with cursor: "42"
anymd book.pdf --max-tokens 8000 --cursor 42

Ranked search when you do not know the exact wording:

anymd search "how is attention scaled" papers/ --mode ranked --max 5