Inside The Machine
Tools
Tools / Document Ingest

Docling

Turns documents into clean text for AI.

Better input means better answers from your docs.

—PENDING
Gap ScorePending test on Mac Studio

Used inChat with your files

Where it sits
Want it installed?Hand this page to your agent.
.md .json
Let your agent do itNot run · docs checked
curl -fsSL https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.sh | bash
irm https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.ps1 | iex
Windows PowerShell (not run by us)
Plan, check, undo

Add -s -- plan to print every step and run nothing, verify to only check, rollback --yes to undo. Not run: commands checked against the official docs only. Commands checked against the official docs on 2026-10-15. Not run end to end.

AGENT VIEW · text/markdown · or send Accept: text/markdown
---
schema: "https://insidethemachine.ai/schema/listing.schema.json"
slug: "docling"
name: "Docling"
category: "Tools / Document Ingest"
stack_layer: "memory"
homepage: "https://github.com/docling-project/docling"
repo: "https://github.com/docling-project/docling"
docs: "https://docling-project.github.io/docling/"
license: "MIT"
platforms: ["macos-apple-silicon", "linux", "windows"]
mac_studio_fit: "Primary"
stars: 68929
stars_as_of: "2026-10-15"
last_push: "2026-10-15"
gap_score: null
gap_score_status: "pending test on Mac Studio"
benchmarks_status: "pending test on Mac Studio"
verified_on: "2026-10-15"
sponsored: false
---

# Docling

> Turn PDFs, Office docs, Apple iWork files, audio and more into clean Markdown/JSON for RAG.

**What:** Turns documents into clean text for AI. **Why:** Better input means better answers from your docs.

**Stack layer:** memory (model → runtime → harness → memory → tools)

A document conversion toolkit (Python package and CLI) that parses many formats into structured output for gen-AI pipelines.

**Gap role:** Retrieval quality: better parsing, better RAG answers from local models.

## Gap Score

null (pending test on Mac Studio)

## Prerequisites

- Python 3.10+ (3.9 support dropped in 2.70.0)

## Install

### macOS (Apple Silicon)

1. Run:

```bash
python3 -m venv ~/.venvs/docling && source ~/.venvs/docling/bin/activate
```

2. Run:

```bash
pip install docling
```

### Linux

1. Run:

```bash
pip install docling
```

### Windows

1. Run:

```bash
pip install docling
```

## Configure

1. optional: VLM pipeline using GraniteDocling:

```bash
docling --pipeline vlm --vlm-model granite_docling https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.01062
```

## Verify

1. Expect: writes a Markdown conversion of the paper to the current directory

```bash
docling https://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.01062
```

## Rollback

1. Run:

```bash
pip uninstall -y docling && rm -rf ~/.venvs/docling
```

## One-command install

Status: docs-checked (Not run: commands checked against the official docs only). The wrapper scripts are generated from the site data. Every .sh passed bash -n and shellcheck and ran in plan mode on Linux (Debian 13). Every .ps1 passed the PowerShell parser and chat.ps1 ran in plan, verify and rollback mode under PowerShell 7 on Linux with Windows calls mocked. Not run on macOS or real Windows.

```bash
curl -fsSL https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.sh | bash            # install, then check
curl -fsSL https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.sh | bash -s -- plan    # print only
curl -fsSL https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.sh | bash -s -- rollback --yes
```

Details and Windows: https://insidethemachine.ai/install/docling.md

## Caveats

- First run downloads layout models.

## Benchmarks

Status: pending test on Mac Studio. Rig: Mac Studio, Apple Silicon, 128GB unified memory. No results published yet.

## Works with

- mem0 (https://insidethemachine.ai/setups/mem0.md)
- open-webui (https://insidethemachine.ai/setups/open-webui.md)

## Sources

- https://github.com/docling-project/docling