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Markdown to PDF & Word

Your AI writes Markdown. Your boss wants a Word doc. One click — cleaned, branded, done.

A Visual Studio Code extension that turns Markdown into a clean, professional document — PDF, Word (.docx), or HTML — with a visual customization studio, reusable document profiles, and a rule-based cleanup engine that strips AI clutter. No Pandoc. No CSS. No setup.

About Project
Why This Extension
Features
Installation
Usage
Commands
Settings
How It Works
Document Profiles
Build From Source
Contribution
Roadmap
License
Contact Me
Acknowledge

About Project

Markdown is great for developers and AI tools, but raw .md files — full of #, *, backticks, emoji, and chatty AI phrases like "Certainly! Here's your document…" — are not something you can hand to HR, a client, or any non-technical reader.

Markdown to PDF & Word solves this entirely inside VS Code. It cleans the Markdown, applies a professional layout (cover page, branding, headers/footers, table of contents), and exports a polished PDF, Word, or HTML document you can send to anyone — all in one click, with nothing else to install (no Pandoc, no external tools).

It is designed for developers who dislike reading raw Markdown and who frequently need to share AI- or hand-written Markdown as a real, presentable document.

Why This Extension

Most existing tools do one piece of this. None combine them:

Capability	Typical MD→PDF tools	Pandoc tools	This extension
Clean AI clutter (intros/outros, emoji)	No	No	Yes
Word (.docx) export without Pandoc	No	No (needs Pandoc)	Yes
Visual customization (no CSS editing)	No	No	Yes
Reusable, shareable document profiles	No	No	Yes
Cover page + branding builder	Partial	Partial	Yes
Gather a whole folder into one document	No	No	Yes

Features

Cleanup (no AI needed): rule-based removal of AI conversational filler ("Certainly! Here's…", "Let me know if…"), emoji, inconsistent heading spacing, smart quotes/dashes, and excessive blank lines. 100% offline and deterministic.
Customization Studio: a visual panel — no CSS — to set a cover page, brand colors, fonts, header/footer, page numbers, and layout, with a live preview that matches the exported result exactly.
Document Profiles: save your look as a reusable profile in .markready/profiles/*.json and commit it so your whole team exports the same way. Ships with presets: HR Formal, Client Proposal, Internal Report, Minimal.
Table of Contents: optional, auto-generated from headings with in-document links.
Folder Gather + Reorder: gather every .md file in a folder, include/exclude and reorder them, then combine into one document.
Three export formats: PDF (via headless Chromium), Word/.docx without Pandoc, HTML.
Clean UI: built with official VS Code Codicons — no emoji anywhere in the product.

Installation

From the VS Code Marketplace (recommended)

Open Visual Studio Code.
Go to the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X).
Search for Markdown to PDF & Word.
Click Install.

Or install from the command line:

code --install-extension AnandSundaramoorthySa.markdown-to-pdf-word

From a `.vsix` file

Download the .vsix from the Releases page, then:

code --install-extension markdown-to-pdf-word-1.0.0.vsix

Note: PDF export uses Chromium. The extension uses its bundled engine, and if that is unavailable it automatically falls back to an installed Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. You can also set a custom path via the markready.chromePath setting.

Usage

Open any Markdown (.md) file.
Press Ctrl+Shift+P and run MarkReady: Open Customization Studio.
Adjust the cover page, colors, fonts, and layout — watch the live preview update.
Click Export PDF, Export Word, or Export HTML.

You can also right-click a .md file (or a folder) in the Explorer for quick actions.

Commands

Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P):

Command	Description
`MarkReady: Open Customization Studio`	Visual editor + live preview + export buttons
`MarkReady: Export as PDF`	Clean + render the active file to PDF
`MarkReady: Export as Word (DOCX)`	Clean + render the active file to Word (no Pandoc)
`MarkReady: Export as HTML`	Clean + render the active file to HTML
`MarkReady: Clean Markdown`	Open a cleaned copy of the active file
`MarkReady: Gather Folder into One Document`	Combine all `.md` in a folder into one document

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`markready.defaultProfile`	`HR Formal`	Profile used by the quick export commands
`markready.chromePath`	`""`	Optional path to a Chrome/Edge/Chromium executable for PDF export
`markready.cleanup.removeChatter`	`true`	Remove AI intros/outros
`markready.cleanup.removeEmoji`	`true`	Strip emoji from headings and text
`markready.cleanup.normalizeHeadings`	`true`	Normalize heading spacing
`markready.cleanup.normalizeWhitespace`	`true`	Collapse excessive blank lines
`markready.cleanup.normalizePunctuation`	`true`	Convert smart quotes/dashes to ASCII

How It Works

.md  ->  cleanup (rules, no AI)  ->  markdown-it -> HTML + cover + TOC + CSS  ->  PDF | DOCX | HTML
                                              ^
                                  Document Profile (JSON)

The Customization Studio edits the Profile JSON and renders the preview through the same pipeline used for export, so what you see is what you get.

Document Profiles

A profile is a small JSON file describing the cover page, branding, header/footer, layout, and options. Saving a profile writes it to:

<your-project>/.markready/profiles/<profile-name>.json

Commit this file to your repository and everyone on the team exports documents with the same look. Built-in presets are available out of the box and can be cloned and customized.

Build From Source

# 1. Clone
git clone https://github.com/anandsundaramoorthysa/markdown-to-pdf-word.git
cd markdown-to-pdf-word

# 2. Install dependencies (Puppeteer downloads Chromium once)
npm install

# 3. Compile
npm run compile

# 4. Launch the Extension Development Host
#    Press F5 in VS Code

To package a .vsix:

npm install -g @vscode/vsce
vsce package

Contribution

Contributions are welcome — bug fixes, new presets, new features, or docs.

Guidelines

Discuss first: for anything non-trivial, open an issue before coding.
Understand the codebase: the pipeline is cleanup.ts -> render.ts -> exporters/*, with the UI in panel.ts (studio) and gatherPanel.ts (folder gather).
Keep the cleanup safe: the cleanup engine must never delete real content — add tests when adding rules.
Match the style: TypeScript, no emoji in code or UI (use Codicons).

Steps

Fork the repository.
Create a branch: git checkout -b feature/your-feature.
Make your changes and run npm run compile.
Commit with a clear message.
Open a pull request describing your change and linking any related issue.

View Open Issues

Roadmap

[ ] AI tone-polish (optional, bring-your-own-key)
[ ] Logo positioning and watermarks
[ ] Code-block theme options
[ ] Publish to Open VSX (for Cursor / VSCodium / Windsurf)
[ ] More built-in profile presets

See PLAN.md for the full design and roadmap.

License

This project is released under the MIT License. You are free to use, modify, and distribute it under the terms of this license. See the LICENSE file for the full text.

Contact Me

If you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions, feel free to reach out:

Anand Sundaramoorthy — sanand03072005@gmail.com
GitHub: @anandsundaramoorthysa

Acknowledge

Built with these excellent open-source projects:

markdown-it — Markdown parsing and rendering
Puppeteer — HTML to PDF via headless Chromium
html-to-docx — HTML to Word, no Pandoc
VS Code Codicons — the icon set used in the UI

Thanks to the VS Code extension community for the guidance and inspiration.

Markdown to PDF & Word

Anand Sundaramoorthy

Markdown to PDF & Word

Table of Contents

About Project

Why This Extension

Features

Installation

From the VS Code Marketplace (recommended)

From a .vsix file

Usage

Commands

Settings

How It Works

Document Profiles

Build From Source

Contribution

Guidelines

Steps

Roadmap

License

Contact Me

Acknowledge

From a `.vsix` file