choosing_a_parser.md
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Most marks come from matching words in the file, so treat them as pointers.
Choosing a Document Parser
LiteParse 2.15.0 supports text, JSON and Markdown locally. Do not route away from it solely because the consumer wants Markdown.
| Need | Suitable path |
|---|---|
| Text boxes, page PNGs, local PDF/Office/image parsing | LiteParse |
| Heuristic Markdown from PDFs or converted Office files | LiteParse; visually inspect complex layouts |
| HTML, EPUB, audio or other formats outside LiteParse's supported inputs | Review the markitdown skill and its converter dependencies |
| Merge/split/rotate, watermark or fill PDF forms | A PDF manipulation library such as pypdf |
| Local extraction fails on dense tables, handwriting or hard scans | Review LlamaParse cloud capabilities, document-sharing authorization and pricing separately |
LiteParse's HTTP OCR is optional and may send rasterized pages to a remote server. Its bundled Tesseract can download missing language files. A local parser therefore does not imply a network-free first run.
For layout-aware RAG, store page number, page dimensions and bounding boxes alongside text; pair the same pages/settings with screenshots. For Markdown, use output_format="markdown" directly and inspect headings, tables, equations, units and references. No local heuristic parser guarantees faithful scientific transcription or chart-data recovery.
The general comparison does not certify another parser's current format matrix or output fidelity. See its own skill/docs before execution. LlamaParse is a separate cloud service, not an endpoint or drop-in credential for LiteParse's HTTP OCR contract.
Reviewed 2026-10-01: LiteParse overview, released LiteParse README, LlamaParse overview.
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