converting-files

# 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, ...