LiteParse — Local Document Parsing

Overview

LiteParse is a fast, open-source document parser (Rust core, Python/Node bindings) focused on local, layout-aware text extraction with bounding boxes. It does not produce Markdown and does not call cloud LLMs. Outputs are plain text (layout-preserved) or structured JSON with per-page text_items (position, font metadata, optional confidence).

Version note: Examples target liteparse 2.0.0 (PyPI, May 2026). The upstream V1 branch is legacy; this skill documents V2 / main only.

For parser selection vs MarkItDown, the pdf skill, or LlamaParse, see references/choosing_a_parser.md.

When to Use This Skill

Use LiteParse when you need:

• Fast local parsing of PDFs or converted Office/image files without cloud dependencies
• Spatial text with bounding boxes for layout-aware RAG, citation grounding, or figure/table region logic
• OCR on scanned PDFs or images (bundled Tesseract, or a user-run HTTP OCR server)
• Page screenshots (PNG) for multimodal agents that must see charts, figures, or handwriting
• Batch ingestion of literature folders, supplementary PDFs, or protocol libraries
• Page subsets or password-protected PDFs

When Not to Use

| Task | Use instead | |------|-------------| | Markdown for LLM ingestion (EPUB, audio, YouTube, HTML) | markitdown skill | | Merge/split PDFs, forms, watermarks, rotation | pdf skill | | Dense tables, handwriting, production cloud pipelines | LlamaParse (cloud; sign up separately) |

Installation

bash
uv pip install "liteparse==2.0.0"

This installs the Python bindings and the lit CLI. Verify:

bash
lit --help
python -c "import liteparse; print(liteparse.__version__)"

Optional system tools (for non-PDF inputs):

• LibreOffice — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OpenDocument, CSV/TSV
• ImageMagick — PNG, JPEG, TIFF, WebP, SVG, etc.

Install commands are in references/ocr_and_formats.md.

Node.js / TypeScript (optional): npm i @llamaindex/liteparse — see references/api_reference.md.

Quick Start

Python

python
from liteparse import LiteParse

parser = LiteParse(quiet=True)
result = parser.parse("paper.pdf")
print(result.text)

for page in result.pages:
    print(f"Page {page.page_num}: {len(page.text_items)} items")

CLI

bash
# Layout-preserved text (default)
lit parse paper.pdf

# Structured JSON with bounding boxes
lit parse paper.pdf --format json -o paper.json

# Disable OCR on text-native PDFs (faster)
lit parse paper.pdf --no-ocr

Core Workflows

1. Parse to layout-preserved text

Best for quick full-document text or feeding chunkers that do not need coordinates.

python
parser = LiteParse(ocr_enabled=True, quiet=True)
result = parser.parse("document.pdf")
full_text = result.text

bash
lit parse document.pdf -o output.txt

2. Parse to structured JSON (bounding boxes)

Use when building layout-aware RAG, highlighting source regions, or joining text with screenshots.

python
import json
from liteparse import LiteParse

parser = LiteParse(output_format="json", quiet=True)
result = parser.parse("document.pdf")

# Programmatic access
for page in result.pages:
    for item in page.text_items:
        bbox = (item.x, item.y, item.width, item.height)
        # item.text, item.confidence, item.font_name, item.font_size

bash
lit parse document.pdf --format json -o document.json

JSON field layout: references/output_formats.md.

3. Parse specific pages

python
parser = LiteParse(target_pages="1-5,10,15-20", quiet=True)
result = parser.parse("long_paper.pdf")

bash
lit parse long_paper.pdf --target-pages "1-5,10"

4. Parse from bytes or stdin

Useful for uploads, S3 downloads, or piping remote PDFs.

python
with open("document.pdf", "rb") as f:
    result = parser.parse(f.read())

bash
curl -sL https://example.com/report.pdf | lit parse -

5. Page screenshots for multimodal agents

Screenshots capture visual content that text extraction alone misses (figures, complex tables, handwriting).

python
from pathlib import Path

parser = LiteParse(dpi=150, quiet=True)
shots = parser.screenshot("document.pdf", page_numbers=[1, 2, 3])
out = Path("screenshots")
out.mkdir(exist_ok=True)
for s in shots:
    (out / f"page_{s.page_num}.png").write_bytes(s.image_bytes)

bash
lit screenshot document.pdf --target-pages "1,3,5" -o ./screenshots
lit screenshot document.pdf --dpi 300 -o ./screenshots

Combine JSON parse + screenshots when an agent needs both coordinates and pixels for the same pages.

6. Batch-parse a directory

For large corpora, prefer the CLI (parallel OCR workers) or the bundled script.

bash
lit batch-parse ./papers ./parsed --format json --recursive
lit batch-parse ./papers ./parsed --extension .pdf --no-ocr

bash
python scripts/batch_parse_dir.py ./papers ./parsed --format json --recursive

See scripts/batch_parse_dir.py for a Python batch wrapper without network calls.

7. OCR configuration

OCR is on by default. Tesseract is bundled; no extra install for basic English OCR.

python
parser = LiteParse(
    ocr_enabled=True,
    ocr_language="eng",       # Tesseract codes: fra, deu, etc.
    num_workers=4,            # parallel OCR (default: CPU cores - 1)
    dpi=150,                  # higher DPI → better OCR, slower
)

bash
lit parse scan.pdf --ocr-language fra
lit parse scan.pdf --no-ocr
lit parse scan.pdf --ocr-server-url http://localhost:8080/ocr

Offline / air-gapped: set TESSDATA_PREFIX to a directory of .traineddata files, or pass --tessdata-path. Details: references/ocr_and_formats.md.

8. Encrypted PDFs

python
parser = LiteParse(password="secret", quiet=True)
result = parser.parse("protected.pdf")

bash
lit parse protected.pdf --password secret

9. Search text items by phrase

Merge adjacent items and return combined bounding boxes for a phrase (e.g. section titles).

python
from liteparse import search_items

page = result.get_page(1)
matches = search_items(page.text_items, "Materials and Methods", case_sensitive=False)

Multi-Format Inputs

| Category | Extensions (examples) | Requirement | |----------|----------------------|-------------| | PDF | .pdf | Native | | Office | .docx, .xlsx, .pptx, .doc, .odt, … | LibreOffice | | Images | .png, .jpg, .tiff, .webp, .svg, … | ImageMagick |

Files are converted to PDF internally, then parsed. If conversion tools are missing, parsing fails with an actionable error — install the dependency and retry.

Performance Tips

• --no-ocr on born-digital PDFs — largest speedup
• target_pages — parse only methods/supplement sections
• num_workers — scale OCR across CPU cores
• max_pages — cap very large files (default 1000)
• lit batch-parse — directory-scale jobs with --recursive and --extension
• Lower dpi (e.g. 100) when OCR quality is already sufficient

Reference Files

| File | Read when | |------|-----------| | references/choosing_a_parser.md | Unsure whether to use LiteParse, MarkItDown, pdf, or LlamaParse | | references/api_reference.md | Python/TypeScript API, types, search_items | | references/cli_reference.md | Full lit command flags | | references/output_formats.md | JSON schema, bboxes, confidence scores | | references/ocr_and_formats.md | Tesseract, HTTP OCR, LibreOffice, ImageMagick |

Troubleshooting

| Issue | Fix | |-------|-----| | Office file fails | Install LibreOffice; ensure soffice is on PATH (Windows: add LibreOffice program dir) | | Image fails | Install ImageMagick; verify convert or magick works | | OCR poor quality | Increase --dpi; try --ocr-language; or HTTP OCR server | | OCR slow | --no-ocr if not needed; reduce pages; increase num_workers | | Air-gapped OCR | export TESSDATA_PREFIX=/path/to/tessdata or --tessdata-path | | ParseError on bytes | Ensure input is valid PDF bytes (Office bytes need a file path + conversion) |

Resources

• GitHub: https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse
• Docs: https://developers.llamaindex.ai/liteparse/
• PyPI: https://pypi.org/project/liteparse/2.0.0/
• npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@llamaindex/liteparse
• OCR API spec: https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse/blob/main/OCR_API_SPEC.md