Firecrawl introduces pdf-inspector, a high-performance Rust library designed for rapid PDF classification, text extraction, and Markdown conversion. By sampling content streams to quickly distinguish between text-based and scanned documents, the tool enables intelligent routing that bypasses costly OCR services for standard PDFs. It delivers position-aware text extraction, automated table and column detection, and robust encoding handling while maintaining a lightweight footprint with no external ML dependencies or model training requirements.
- Provides bindings for Python, Node.js, and browser WebAssembly environments.
- Achieves sub-200ms processing times on large corpora while outperforming several established local parsers in reading order and table accuracy.
- Features per-page OCR routing suggestions to optimize mixed-format document workflows.
- Handles complex layouts including RTL text, multi-column newspapers, and CID-encoded fonts.
- Released under the MIT license with active community contributions and CI/CD automation.
Docling simplifies document processing, parsing diverse formats โ including advanced PDF understanding โ and providing seamless integrations with the gen AI ecosystem.