Converting Files skill

converting-files

Four conversion engines are already in this container — pandoc, libreoffice (headless), ImageMagick's convert, and ffmpeg. The hard part isn't running them; it's picking the right one. pandoc mangles a real .docx into PDF; LibreOffice is the tool for that. pandoc is better than LibreOffice for md → docx. Neither touches mp4 → gif. This skill encodes that routing so the choice isn't re-derived (often wrongly) each time.

scripts/convert.py is a dispatcher over those four binaries, not a new engine. Use it for the common cases; drop to the raw engine when you need flags it doesn't pass through.

Is this the right skill?

You want to…	Use instead
Change a file's format (ext A → ext B)	this skill
Edit/author a Word/PPT/Excel/PDF's content	docx / pptx / xlsx / pdf skills
Read a file already shown in context	just read it — no conversion
Extract text/tables from a PDF	pdf-reading skill
Fill or merge PDFs	pdf skill

Format change = here. Content change = a content skill. A docx → pdf is a format change; "fix the grammar in this docx" is not.

Engine routing (the actual content of this skill)

Source family → target family decides the engine. The dispatcher applies this; the table is here so the reasoning is auditable and so you can call the engine directly when needed.

From → To	Engine	Why
markup → markup (md, html, rst, latex, org, epub, rtf, ipynb…)	pandoc	what it's built for
markup → Office (md → docx/pptx/odt)	pandoc	cleaner than LibreOffice from markup
Office → markup (docx/odt/pptx → md/html…)	pandoc	reads modern OOXML well
Office → PDF (docx/pptx/xlsx → pdf)	LibreOffice	preserves layout; pandoc mangles it
Office ↔ Office, or legacy (.doc/.ppt/.xls) anything	LibreOffice	pandoc can't read legacy binary formats at all
markup → PDF (md → pdf)	pandoc (+pdflatex/xelatex)	lighter than LibreOffice for plain markup
image ↔ image (png, jpg, gif, webp, tiff, heic, svg…)	ImageMagick	convert in out
image → PDF	ImageMagick
audio ↔ audio (mp3, wav, flac, ogg, aac, m4a, opus…)	ffmpeg
video ↔ video, mp4 → gif, gif → mp4	ffmpeg	gif-from-video is an ffmpeg job, not ImageMagick

gif lives in both image and video worlds: png → gif is ImageMagick (still image), mp4 → gif is ffmpeg (animation). The dispatcher handles the split by the source family.

Usage

# Plan only — print engine + reason + exact command, run nothing. Do this first
# on an unfamiliar pair to confirm the route before committing.
python3 /mnt/skills/user/converting-files/scripts/convert.py --plan in.docx out.pdf

# Convert.
python3 /mnt/skills/user/converting-files/scripts/convert.py in.docx out.pdf
python3 /mnt/skills/user/converting-files/scripts/convert.py notes.md notes.docx
python3 /mnt/skills/user/converting-files/scripts/convert.py clip.mp4 clip.gif

# Pass engine flags through (everything after OUTPUT goes to the engine):
python3 .../convert.py photo.png photo.jpg -quality 85         # ImageMagick
python3 .../convert.py song.wav song.mp3 -b:a 192k             # ffmpeg
python3 .../convert.py paper.md paper.pdf --pdf-engine=xelatex # pandoc

# Force a specific engine if you disagree with the route:
python3 .../convert.py weird.docx weird.md --engine pandoc

Exit codes: 0 ok, 2 no route exists, 3 engine failed (stderr tail printed), 4 bad args / missing input.

Batch

The dispatcher is one file at a time by design — batch is a shell loop so each file's failure is visible:

for f in *.png; do
  python3 /mnt/skills/user/converting-files/scripts/convert.py "$f" "${f%.png}.webp" || echo "FAILED: $f"
done

Gotchas (the things that cost a re-run)

• LibreOffice names the output itself — it writes <input-stem>.<ext> into --outdir, ignoring your chosen filename. The dispatcher renames to your OUTPUT after. If you call libreoffice raw, expect the input-stem name.
• LibreOffice headless is single-instance. Two concurrent --headless calls collide on the user profile and one silently does nothing. Run them serially (the batch loop above is serial — fine).
• markup → pdf needs a LaTeX engine. pdflatex/xelatex are present, but exotic Unicode wants --pdf-engine=xelatex. If LaTeX chokes on the content, route through docx first: md → docx (pandoc) then docx → pdf (LibreOffice).
• ImageMagick here is IM6 (convert, not magick). Policy may block some formats; if convert refuses a PDF/PS op, that's the /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml security policy, not a missing codec.
• markup → jira emits heading anchors. md → jira works (both are pandoc formats), but headings come out as h1. {anchor:slug}Title — pandoc materializing the auto-generated heading ID. Suppress with --engine pandoc ... -f markdown-auto_identifiers (pass the format-with-extension yourself, since the dispatcher infers a bare markdown).
• --plan lies about nothing but runs nothing — it can't tell you the content will survive (e.g. a pptx → md drops all layout). Plan checks the route; only a real run checks the result.

Why not VERT (or any web converter) as the skill

VERT (vert.sh) is a Svelte/WASM browser app wrapping these same engines (libvips, ffmpeg.wasm, Pandoc-wasm) for a human at a tab who wants local privacy. There's no library or CLI to import — the app is the UI. In-container we already have the native binaries with full filesystem access and no browser memory ceiling, so the WASM wrappers would be strictly slower and weaker. VERT is a good recommendation to a person; it's the wrong shape for a skill. This skill is the in-container equivalent of what VERT does in a tab.