--- title: CLI Reference | Developer Documentation description: Complete reference for all LiteParse CLI commands and options. --- LiteParse provides the `lit` CLI with three commands: `parse`, `batch-parse`, and `screenshot`. ## `lit parse` Parse a single document. ``` lit parse [options] ``` ### Arguments | Argument | Description | | -------- | ---------------------------------------------------- | | `file` | Path to the document file, or `-` to read from stdin | ### Options | Option | Description | Default | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------ | | `-o, --output ` | Write output to a file instead of stdout | — | | `--format ` | Output format: `json` or `text` | `text` | | `--ocr-server-url ` | HTTP OCR server URL | — (uses Tesseract) | | `--no-ocr` | Disable OCR entirely | — | | `--ocr-language ` | OCR language code | `en` | | `--num-workers ` | Pages to OCR in parallel | CPU cores - 1 | | `--max-pages ` | Maximum pages to parse | `10000` | | `--target-pages ` | Pages to parse (e.g., `"1-5,10"`) | — (all pages) | | `--dpi ` | Rendering DPI | `150` | | `--no-precise-bbox` | **Deprecated:** Disable populating the output boundingBoxes array. Will be removed in v2.0. Text item coordinates (`x`, `y`, `width`, `height`) are always present regardless. | — | | `--preserve-small-text` | Keep very small text | — | | `--password ` | Password for encrypted/protected documents | — | | `--config ` | JSON config file path | — | | `-q, --quiet` | Suppress progress output | — | ### Examples Terminal window ``` # Basic text parsing lit parse report.pdf # JSON output with bounding boxes lit parse report.pdf --format json -o report.json # 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 - ``` --- ## `lit batch-parse` Parse multiple documents in a directory. ``` lit batch-parse [options] ``` ### Arguments | Argument | Description | | ------------ | --------------------------------------- | | `input-dir` | Directory containing documents to parse | | `output-dir` | Directory for output files | ### Options | Option | Description | Default | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------ | | `--format ` | Output format: `json` or `text` | `text` | | `--ocr-server-url ` | HTTP OCR server URL | — (uses Tesseract) | | `--no-ocr` | Disable OCR entirely | — | | `--ocr-language ` | OCR language code | `en` | | `--num-workers ` | Pages to OCR in parallel | CPU cores - 1 | | `--max-pages ` | Maximum pages per file | `10000` | | `--dpi ` | Rendering DPI | `150` | | `--no-precise-bbox` | **Deprecated:** Disable populating the output boundingBoxes array. Will be removed in v2.0. Text item coordinates (`x`, `y`, `width`, `height`) are always present regardless. | — | | `--recursive` | Search subdirectories | — | | `--extension ` | Only process this extension (e.g., `".pdf"`) | — (all supported) | | `--password ` | Password for encrypted/protected documents (applied to all files) | — | | `--config ` | JSON config file path | — | | `-q, --quiet` | Suppress progress output | — | ### Examples Terminal window ``` # 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 # Use a config file for consistent settings lit batch-parse ./documents ./output --config liteparse.config.json ``` --- ## `lit screenshot` Generate page images from a PDF. ``` lit screenshot [options] ``` ### Arguments | Argument | Description | | -------- | -------------------- | | `file` | Path to the PDF file | ### Options | Option | Description | Default | | ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------ | --------------- | | `-o, --output-dir ` | Output directory | `./screenshots` | | `--target-pages ` | Pages to screenshot (e.g., `"1,3,5"` or `"1-5"`) | — (all pages) | | `--dpi ` | Rendering DPI | `150` | | `--format ` | Image format: `png` or `jpg` | `png` | | `--password ` | Password for encrypted/protected documents | — | | `--config ` | JSON config file path | — | | `-q, --quiet` | Suppress progress output | — | ### Examples Terminal window ``` # Screenshot all pages lit screenshot document.pdf -o ./pages # First 5 pages at high DPI lit screenshot document.pdf --pages "1-5" --dpi 300 -o ./pages # JPG format for smaller files lit screenshot document.pdf --format jpg -o ./pages # Specific pages only lit screenshot document.pdf --pages "1,5,10" -o ./pages ``` --- ## Global options These options are available on all commands: | Option | Description | | --------------- | ----------------------- | | `-h, --help` | Show help for a command | | `-V, --version` | Show version number |