Markdown to PDF Converter

A Claude Code skill for converting markdown documents to professional, print-ready PDFs using pandoc and weasyprint with academic styling.

Overview

This skill automates the markdown-to-PDF pipeline with:

Academic-style CSS (system fonts, proper tables, page breaks)
HTML diagram capture via Playwright at retina quality
Iterative refinement workflow for complex documents

Prerequisites

# Required
brew install pandoc
pip install weasyprint

# Optional (for diagram capture)
npm install playwright
npx playwright install chromium

Usage

Trigger the skill with phrases like:

"convert this markdown to PDF"
"generate a PDF from this document"
"create a professional PDF report"

Key Features

Academic Table Styling

Tables use traditional academic formatting with top/bottom borders on headers and clean cell spacing.

Smart Page Breaks

Headings stay with following content
Tables and figures don't split across pages
Manual page breaks via <div style="page-break-before: always;"></div>

Figure Centering

Proper figure centering that works in weasyprint (not all CSS properties are supported).

Retina-Quality Diagrams

Playwright captures HTML diagrams at 2x resolution for crisp print output.

File Structure

markdown-to-pdf-converter/
├── SKILL.md           # Main skill instructions
├── README.md          # This file
├── CHANGELOG.md       # Version history
├── templates/
│   ├── pdf-style.css          # Academic CSS stylesheet
│   └── capture-diagrams.js    # Playwright screenshot script
├── examples/
│   └── report-template.md     # Example markdown structure
├── reference/
│   └── weasyprint-notes.md    # CSS compatibility notes
└── workflow/
    └── iterative-refinement.md # Page break tuning process

Version

1.0.0 - Initial release based on paralleLLM empathy-experiment-v1.0.pdf

Author

Connor Skiro