CLI Reference

LiteParse provides the lit CLI with four commands: parse, batch-parse, screenshot, and is-complex. The CLI is the same whether installed via npm, pip, or built from Rust source.

lit parse

Parse a single document.

lit parse [options] <file>

Arguments

Argument	Description
file	Path to the document file, or - to read from stdin

Options

Option	Description	Default
-o, --output <file>	Write output to a file instead of stdout	—
--format <format>	Output format: json, text, or markdown	text
--image-mode <mode>	Markdown image handling: off, placeholder, or embed	placeholder
--image-output-dir <dir>	Directory to write images to when --image-mode embed	—
--no-links	Emit link anchor text as plain text (no [text](url)) in markdown	—
--no-ocr	Disable OCR entirely	—
--ocr-language <lang>	OCR language code (Tesseract format)	eng
--ocr-server-url <url>	HTTP OCR server URL	— (uses Tesseract)
--tessdata-path <path>	Path to tessdata directory	— (uses TESSDATA_PREFIX env var)
--num-workers <n>	Pages to OCR in parallel	CPU cores - 1
--max-pages <n>	Maximum pages to parse	1000
--target-pages <pages>	Pages to parse (e.g., "1-5,10")	— (all pages)
--dpi <dpi>	Rendering DPI	150
--preserve-small-text	Keep very small text	—
--password <password>	Password for encrypted/protected documents	—
-q, --quiet	Suppress progress output	—

Examples

# Basic text parsing
lit parse report.pdf

# JSON output with bounding boxes
lit parse report.pdf --format json -o report.json

# Markdown output (headings, tables, lists, images, links)
lit parse report.pdf --format markdown -o report.md

# Markdown with embedded images written to disk
lit parse report.pdf --format markdown --image-mode embed --image-output-dir ./images

# Parse pages 1-5 only, no OCR
lit parse report.pdf --target-pages "1-5" --no-ocr

# High-DPI rendering with French OCR
lit parse report.pdf --dpi 300 --ocr-language fra

# Use an external OCR server
lit parse report.pdf --ocr-server-url http://localhost:8828/ocr

# Pipe output to another tool
lit parse report.pdf -q | wc -l

# Parse a remote file via stdin
curl -sL https://example.com/report.pdf | lit parse --no-ocr -

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lit batch-parse

Parse multiple documents in a directory.

lit batch-parse [options] <input-dir> <output-dir>

Arguments

Argument	Description
input-dir	Directory containing documents to parse
output-dir	Directory for output files

Options

Option	Description	Default
--format <format>	Output format: json, text, or markdown	text
--no-ocr	Disable OCR entirely	—
--ocr-language <lang>	OCR language code	eng
--ocr-server-url <url>	HTTP OCR server URL	— (uses Tesseract)
--tessdata-path <path>	Path to tessdata directory	—
--num-workers <n>	Pages to OCR in parallel	CPU cores - 1
--max-pages <n>	Maximum pages per file	1000
--dpi <dpi>	Rendering DPI	150
--recursive	Search subdirectories	—
--extension <ext>	Only process this extension (e.g., ".pdf")	— (all supported)
--password <password>	Password for encrypted/protected documents (applied to all files)	—
-q, --quiet	Suppress progress output	—

Examples

# Parse all supported files in a directory
lit batch-parse ./documents ./output

# Recursively parse only PDFs
lit batch-parse ./documents ./output --recursive --extension ".pdf"

# Batch parse with JSON output and no OCR
lit batch-parse ./documents ./output --format json --no-ocr

---

lit screenshot

Generate page images from a document (PDF, DOCX, XLSX, images, etc.).

lit screenshot [options] <file>

Arguments

Argument	Description
file	Path to the document file

Options

Option	Description	Default
-o, --output-dir <dir>	Output directory	./screenshots
--target-pages <pages>	Pages to screenshot (e.g., "1,3,5" or "1-5")	— (all pages)
--dpi <dpi>	Rendering DPI	150
--password <password>	Password for encrypted/protected documents	—
-q, --quiet	Suppress progress output	—

Examples

# Screenshot all pages of a PDF
lit screenshot document.pdf -o ./pages

# Screenshot a Word document (requires LibreOffice)
lit screenshot report.docx -o ./pages

# First 5 pages at high DPI
lit screenshot document.pdf --target-pages "1-5" --dpi 300 -o ./pages

# Specific pages only
lit screenshot document.pdf --target-pages "1,5,10" -o ./pages

---

lit is-complex

Check whether a document needs OCR or heavier parsing — a cheap pre-parse pass over the text layer only (no rasterization, no OCR). See the Document Complexity guide for details.

lit is-complex [options] <file>

The command prints per-page JSON to stdout, a human-readable verdict to stderr, and exits non-zero when any page needs OCR — so it works as a shell predicate or a jq source.

Arguments

Argument	Description
file	Path to the document file

Options

Option	Description	Default
--compact	Emit dense, whitespace-free JSON instead of pretty-printed	—
--max-pages <n>	Maximum pages to check	1000
--target-pages <pages>	Pages to check (e.g., "1-5,10,15-20")	— (all pages)
--password <password>	Password for encrypted/protected documents	—
-q, --quiet	Suppress the stderr verdict	—

Examples

# Print the complexity verdict and per-page JSON
lit is-complex document.pdf

# Use as a shell predicate: only parse with --no-ocr when simple
lit is-complex document.pdf --quiet && lit parse document.pdf --no-ocr

# List the page numbers that need OCR
lit is-complex document.pdf --compact | jq '[.[] | select(.needs_ocr) | .page_number]'

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Global options

These options are available on all commands:

Option	Description
-h, --help	Show help for a command
-V, --version	Show version number