This article describes to-markdown.sh: a single, self-contained CLI script that converts many document types (PDF/DOCX/HTML/… and URLs) into Markdown using the markitdown tool running inside Docker.

Why this script exists (motivation)

MarkItDown is a Python tool. If you are a Python developer, installing it is usually fine. But for everyone else, it often means dealing with:

• installing Python (and the right Python version)
• setting up a virtualenv / pipx
• troubleshooting native dependencies or platform-specific issues
• avoiding “works on my machine” problems and dependency conflicts

to-markdown.sh intentionally hides all that complexity by running markitdown in a small Docker image.