2026-09-18 · 7 min
Turning a Pile of Research Papers Into a RAG Knowledge Base
Academic PDFs are the hardest to convert well — columns, citations, equations, tables. Here's how to turn research papers into Markdown for a RAG knowledge base.
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Converting documents for AI — done properly. Tokens, chunks, and privacy.
2026-09-18 · 6 min
PowerPoint to Markdown: Pulling the Words Out of the Slides
A slide deck scatters its text across shapes, columns and speaker notes. Here's how to convert PowerPoint to Markdown so an LLM gets the content, not the layout.
Read2026-09-18 · 6 min
Give Your AI Assistant the Power to Convert Documents Itself (MCP)
Stop converting a file, then pasting it into Claude. With an MCP server, your assistant converts documents to Markdown itself — locally, on your machine.
Read2026-09-18 · 5 min
The Markdown Cheat Sheet for AI Prompts
A practical Markdown cheat sheet — every syntax you need, plus why structuring your prompts and context in Markdown gets better answers out of an LLM.
Read2026-09-18 · 6 min
EPUB to Markdown: Getting a Whole Book Into Your LLM
EPUBs are structured HTML inside a zip — which makes them convert to Markdown cleanly. Here's how to turn an ebook into Markdown for AI, and how to handle its size.
Read2026-09-18 · 5 min
CSV to Markdown: The Simple Conversion With Sneaky Edge Cases
CSV looks like the easiest format to convert to a Markdown table — until commas inside fields and stray quotes break it. Here's how to convert CSV to Markdown correctly.
Read2026-09-17 · 6 min
Convert Word to Markdown Locally (Without the Formatting Mess)
Word documents are full of invisible formatting that breaks when you paste them into an LLM. Here's how to convert Word to clean Markdown, locally, without the cruft.
Read2026-09-17 · 6 min
Scanned PDF to Markdown: Getting Text Out of an Image
A scanned PDF is just pictures of pages — there's no text to copy. Here's how OCR turns a scanned PDF into Markdown, and how to do it without uploading the scan.
Read2026-09-17 · 6 min
HTML to Markdown: Getting the Article Without the Page Around It
Copy a web page into an LLM and you get the nav, cookie banner and ads too. Here's how to convert HTML to clean Markdown — just the content, ready for AI.
Read2026-09-17 · 6 min
Excel to Markdown: Tables an LLM Can Actually Read
Paste a spreadsheet into an LLM and the columns collapse into mush. Here's how to convert Excel to clean Markdown tables that keep every value tied to its label.
Read2026-09-17 · 7 min
A Field Guide to Document Formats for LLMs (What Converts Cleanly, What Fights You)
Not every file format feeds an LLM equally well. A practical field guide to which document formats convert cleanly to Markdown for AI — and which ones make you work.
Read2026-09-16 · 6 min
How Many Tokens Is My Document? (And Why You Should Care)
You can't tell if a document will fit in an LLM by looking at it. Here's how to count the tokens in a document, what the number means, and why word count lies.
Read2026-08-13 · 9 min
Markdown Is Step One. Chunking Is Where RAG Actually Breaks.
Clean Markdown is the easy part of a RAG pipeline. Header-aware chunking, sane overlap, and per-chunk metadata are what decide whether retrieval works.
Read2026-08-13 · 9 min
Your PDF Converter Is Probably Uploading Your Files. Here's How to Check.
Most PDF-to-Markdown tools send your documents to a server. Learn to audit any converter with browser DevTools in five minutes — including this one.
Read2026-08-13 · 8 min
Every PDF Converter Says It's 'For AI.' None of Them Count Your Tokens.
Every PDF-to-Markdown tool markets itself 'for AI,' but stops at the .md file. Here's the gap between that claim and what your model actually needs.
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