Pandoc

Why Give a Bot Pandoc

Pandoc has been the answer to “convert this to that” for twenty years, and its cost has always been the flags. Nobody remembers --from, --to, reference documents and filter syntax between uses.

An agent does remember, and it reads the manual faster than you do. Installing Pandoc turns a documented-but-fiddly tool into “make this a Word document”.

Install It

1. Open the dashboard and go to Tools.
2. Pick a running bot — tools install per instance.
3. Install Pandoc. It arrives as a pinned, checksum-verified local CLI (GPL-2.0) and runs inside your own container.

On Hermes, restart the bot afterwards if it does not seem to notice — the skill index is built at gateway start. OpenClaw picks it up on the next message.

The PDF Caveat, Up Front

A PDF engine is deliberately not bundled, to keep the install light. So “convert this Markdown straight to PDF” will not work out of the box — that path needs a LaTeX or HTML-to-PDF engine installed separately.

In practice this matters less than it sounds. Convert to DOCX or HTML and you have a file anything can print, and for Office formats specifically OfficeCLI is the better tool because it writes them natively with formulas and charts intact. Reach for Pandoc when the job is a conversion between formats, not the authoring of a rich document.

What to Ask For

• “Turn this Markdown into a Word document.”
• “Convert these notes to EPUB so I can read them on my e-reader.”
• “Take this HTML page and give me clean Markdown.”
• “Convert this LaTeX paper to DOCX, keeping the citations.”
• “Merge these three Markdown files into one document with a table of contents.”

Pandoc, MarkItDown or OfficeCLI?

• Pandoc converts between formats, in both directions, with fine control over structure.
• MarkItDown flattens things into Markdown so the agent can read them — a one-way door for comprehension.
• OfficeCLI authors real Office files, with working formulas, charts and templates.

They overlap enough to confuse and differ enough to matter. Installing more than one is normal; the agent picks per task.

Troubleshooting

• PDF conversion fails. Expected — no PDF engine is bundled. Convert to DOCX or HTML instead, or install an engine yourself in the container.
• Formatting is lost. Conversion between formats with different capabilities always loses something. Say what matters (“keep the headings and tables”) so the agent can pick options that preserve it.
• The bot answers in chat instead of producing a file. Ask for the file explicitly, and confirm Pandoc shows as installed on that particular bot.

Try It

Install it, send a Markdown file, and ask for it as a Word document. Then ask for the same content as EPUB — the second conversion costs you nothing but a sentence.

Related: the Tools catalog, OfficeCLI, MarkItDown, MinerU.