Anydoc Preview

A local-first Windows desktop app for turning documents into clean Markdown.

An independent Windows desktop companion for firecrawl/anydoc.

Anydoc Preview converts documents locally with @firecrawl/anydoc, shows the result as Markdown or a rendered preview, and can fall back to Firecrawl OCR when a scan has no usable text layer.

This is an independent community project and is not an official Firecrawl product.

Download

Download the latest Windows build from GitHub Releases, extract Anydoc-Preview-Windows.zip, and run Anydoc Preview.exe.

The Preview build is not code-signed yet. Windows SmartScreen may ask you to confirm that you want to run it. Source code and reproducible GitHub Actions packaging are available in this repository.

Why Anydoc Preview?

• Local first. Documents with extractable text stay on your computer.
• Useful for scans. Optional Firecrawl Parse fallback can run OCR when local extraction has no useful result.
• Built for Markdown. Inspect the source, switch to rendered preview, copy it, or save it as .md.
• Small security boundary. Electron context isolation and sandboxing are enabled; the renderer never receives the Firecrawl API key.
• English and Russian UI. Change the interface language from Settings.

Supported documents

Word, PowerPoint, Excel, OpenDocument, RTF, EPUB, CSV, and PDF files are accepted. Exact local format support comes from @firecrawl/anydoc.

How processing works

1. The app asks @firecrawl/anydoc to convert the selected file locally.
2. When useful text is returned, the file is never uploaded by Anydoc Preview.
3. If local conversion fails or returns no useful text, the app can use Firecrawl Parse when an API key is configured.
4. The Markdown result is shown as source or as a sanitized rendered preview.

Document
   |
   v
@firecrawl/anydoc (local)
   | useful text                     | empty or unsupported
   v                                 v
Markdown preview              Firecrawl Parse + OCR
                                     |
                                     v
                              Markdown preview

Firecrawl OCR fallback

Open Settings, enter a Firecrawl API key, and save it. The key is encrypted using Electron safeStorage, backed by Windows cryptography; only the Electron main process can decrypt it.

The app contacts Firecrawl only during fallback. Scanned PDFs request Markdown with OCR enabled. Firecrawl usage consumes credits according to the account and current Firecrawl pricing.

Get a key from the official Firecrawl API keys page.

Development

Requirements:

• Windows 10 or later
• Node.js 22 or later
• npm

git clone https://github.com/Mafsolin/anydoc-preview.git
cd anydoc-preview
npm ci
npm run dev

Run the same checks used by CI:

npm test
npm run typecheck
npm run lint
npm run build

Create an unpacked Windows build:

npm run package:win

The executable is written to release/win-unpacked/Anydoc Preview.exe. Generated output in out/ and release/ is intentionally excluded from Git.

Architecture

React renderer
    | narrow preload API / IPC
    v
Electron main process
    +-- @firecrawl/anydoc (local conversion)
    +-- conversion pipeline
    +-- Firecrawl Parse (optional fallback)
    +-- safeStorage and native dialogs

nodeIntegration is disabled; contextIsolation and renderer sandboxing are enabled.

• src/main/ — windows, IPC, dialogs, and encrypted settings
• src/preload/ — narrow renderer-facing API
• src/shared/ — conversion pipeline, providers, and translations
• src/renderer/ — drag-and-drop UI and preview
• tests/ — routing and localization tests
• docs/architecture.md — detailed architecture
• docs/decision-log.md — key design decisions
• docs/roadmap.md — planned capabilities

Relationship to anydoc

firecrawl/anydoc is the Rust conversion engine and the source of the @firecrawl/anydoc Node.js package. Anydoc Preview is a separate Electron application built on that public package. It does not fork or modify the anydoc engine.

Thanks to the Firecrawl team and anydoc contributors for making the converter available under the MIT License.

Contributing and security

Contributions are welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

Please report vulnerabilities privately according to SECURITY.md. Never attach private documents, API keys, or unredacted application data to a public issue.

Project status

v0.1.0 is a Windows Preview release. OCR.Space integration, batch processing, Office export, and macOS/Linux packages are possible future work; see the roadmap.

License

Anydoc Preview is released under the MIT License. Dependencies and brand assets retain their own licenses and terms; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.