Markdownify MCP 🔌 MCP server Open source

What it does

Markdownify MCP turns files and web content into Markdown that a coding agent can read. It wraps Microsoft's markitdown library, which the install script puts into a local Python virtual environment. The server passes a PDF, Office document, image, audio file, web page or YouTube link through it and returns clean text. This is handy when a task depends on a spec sent as a PDF, a requirements spreadsheet, slides from a design review or a recorded walkthrough. Without it, the agent would have to guess at binary files. The project is small and MIT-licensed, and it is also listed in Docker's MCP catalog as mcp/markdownify.

Tools it gives your agent

• Documents: pdf-to-markdown, docx-to-markdown, xlsx-to-markdown, pptx-to-markdown
• Media: image-to-markdown (with metadata) and audio-to-markdown (with transcription)
• Web: webpage-to-markdown, bing-search-to-markdown, youtube-to-markdown for video transcripts
• Files: get-markdown-file to read an existing .md or .markdown file

Works with

This is a local stdio server. You build it with Bun and run it with Node. The README shows a generic desktop-app config, so any MCP client that can start a local command should work. A Docker image is also available, but it installs only the PDF extras, so image OCR and audio transcription fail in the slim image.

How to connect

Clone the repository, run bun install and bun run build, then point your client at the built file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "markdownify": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "{ABSOLUTE PATH TO FILE HERE}/dist/index.js"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Cost and limits

It is free, and the README doesn't mention any accounts or API keys. Setup is manual: there is no published npm one-liner, and you need Bun, Node and Python. Conversion quality depends on markitdown, so scanned PDFs and complex layouts may come out rough.

Safety notes

By default the file tools can read any path the server process can reach. Set MD_ALLOWED_PATHS to limit them to specific folders. In Docker, mount only the folders you need, read-only, and set the same variable. The web tools fetch whatever URL the agent passes, so treat fetched pages as untrusted input.