The Node.js binding is @firecrawl/anydoc — native code running on the libuv thread pool, so converting documents in a high-concurrency service won't block your event loop.

Install

npm install @firecrawl/anydoc

TypeScript types are bundled; nothing extra to configure.

The three core APIs

import { toMarkdown, toMarkdownBytes, toDocument } from '@firecrawl/anydoc'

// 1. From a path (most common)
const markdown = await toMarkdown('report.docx')
console.log(markdown)

// 2. From bytes (when the file is already in memory)
const buf = await fs.readFile('slides.pptx')
const md = await toMarkdownBytes(buf)

// 3. Stop at the document model (keep embedded assets)
const doc = await toDocument(buf)
// doc exposes raw bytes and media types of images/objects

Error handling

try {
  await toMarkdown('scanned.pdf')
}
catch (e) {
  console.error(e.code) // 'unsupported' | 'malformed' | 'encrypted' | 'resourceLimit' | 'missingPart' | 'io'
}

All errors expose a code — the mapping is in Error Handling & Limits.

Common scenarios

Batch-convert a directory

import { readdir } from 'node:fs/promises'
import { toMarkdown } from '@firecrawl/anydoc'

const dir = './docs'
for (const name of await readdir(dir)) {
  if (/\.(docx|pptx|xlsx|pdf)$/i.test(name)) {
    const md = await toMarkdown(`${dir}/${name}`)
    await writeFile(`${dir}/${name}.md`, md)
  }
}

Convert on web upload

// Given a File object from a form, convert the bytes directly
const bytes = await file.arrayBuffer()
const markdown = await toMarkdownBytes(new Uint8Array(bytes))
// Send the result to the client, or feed it to your LLM

Hand documents to an AI agent

Wrap toMarkdown as a tool function and expose it to LLM tool calling — your agent can then "read" any uploaded office file:

const convertDoc = async (path) => await toMarkdown(path)
// register as a tool → the agent calls it directly

Tips

• Conversion is synchronous under the hood (on the thread pool); there's no separate async API to await beyond the call itself
• Write to disk with fs.writeFile('out.md', markdown) — the CLI's -o flag does exactly this
• Check the changelog on upgrades; error-code naming may adjust across major versions

Contributors: souvc