file2text

An open-source CLI and TypeScript library for extracting text or converting local files and HTTP(S) URLs to Markdown.

Installation

npm install -g file2text
file2text --help

You can also run it with npx file2text <file>.

CLI

file2text report.pdf
file2text ./document.docx -o document.txt
file2text 'https://example.com/report.pdf' -o report.txt
file2text 'file:///path/to/document.txt'
file2text scan.png --format markdown --model google/gemini-2.5-flash -o scan.md

Features

1. 📄 Documents: Extract DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, and PDF locally; formats are detected from contents. Other inputs are read as UTF-8, including empty files.
2. 🖼️ OCR: Recognize images locally in Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, and English; required language data is managed automatically. Scanned PDFs require a multimodal model.
3. 🤖 AI Markdown: A configured MEDIA_AI_MODEL or --model enables AI conversion by default. Failures are reported on stderr and fall back to local text. Use --format text for local extraction or --format markdown to try AI even without a configured model.
4. 📤 Output: Print to stdout with a newline, or use --output to write unchanged text. Missing directories are created and existing files overwritten. Unrecoverable errors exit nonzero; successful fallbacks exit successfully.
5. ⚠️ Limits: No stdin or local extraction of legacy DOC/XLS/PPT, audio, video, or other binary formats. AI sends files to the provider, may incur costs, and depends on model limits.

Quote paths containing spaces; prefix a path beginning with - with ./.

Configuration

The CLI loads .env from the current working directory. Existing environment variables take precedence. Set these variables in the environment or in .env:

Variable	Purpose
MEDIA_AI_MODEL	Default Markdown model in AI Gateway provider/model format; --model overrides it
AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY	Vercel AI Gateway key for Markdown conversion; not needed for local text extraction

🌐 Proxy: The CLI honors standard HTTP(S) proxy environment variables.

Library API

import { file2text, file2markdown, image2text, textualizeFile } from 'file2text';

const text = await file2text('./report.pdf');
const remote = await file2text(new URL('https://example.com/report.pdf'));
const ocr = await image2text(imageBuffer);
const markdown = await file2markdown(pdfBuffer, 'google/gemini-2.5-flash');
const automatic = await textualizeFile('./report.pdf');

API	Behavior
📄 file2text, getFileMIME	Accept paths, file:/HTTP(S) URLs or Buffer values.
🤖 file2markdown	Accepts the same inputs and an optional AI SDK LanguageModel; remote content is fetched once per conversion.
🖼️ image2text	Recognizes an image Buffer.
🔄 textualizeFile	Reads local text files directly; otherwise tries Markdown, logs failures and falls back to local extraction.
🧰 Other exports	makeFileURL, FileInput and markdownPrompt.

Set MEDIA_AI_MODEL before importing the library to use the default model; its value is captured when the module loads.

Development and publishing

pnpm install
pnpm build
pnpm test
pnpm pack --dry-run

1. 🧪 Tests: pnpm test covers local extraction, real OCR, and CLI behavior. Cloud AI calls are mocked; HTTP tests use a local server. The publish workflow tests Node.js 22, 24, and 26.
2. 📦 Build: Creates ESM, declarations, and the CLI; pnpm pack builds automatically. Runtime dependencies are installed with the package.
3. 🚀 Publish: The release workflow publishes version tags when NPM_TOKEN is configured. Alternatively, run pnpm publish --access public. No API keys are stored in the repository.