Mistral OCR CLI (Python)

A command-line tool for processing documents with Mistral AI's OCR capabilities, implemented in Python.

Features

• Process PDF documents and images using Mistral AI's OCR
• Extract text and structured content from documents
• Process local files or files from URLs
• Output results to stdout or to a file
• Convert OCR results to Markdown format
• Maintain document structure and formatting in the output

Installation

Requirements

• Python 3.7 or later
• pip (Python package installer)

Installing from source

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/mistral-ocr-python
cd mistral-ocr-python
pip install -e .

Alternatively, you can use the build script:

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/mistral-ocr-python
cd mistral-ocr-python
./build.sh

Usage

Setting up your API key

You can provide your Mistral API key in two ways:

1. Environment variable:

export MISTRAL_API_KEY=your-api-key

2. Command line flag:

mistral-ocr --api-key=your-api-key [command]

Commands

Process a document

Process a document file or URL:

# Process a local PDF file
mistral-ocr process path/to/document.pdf

# Process a document from a URL
mistral-ocr process https://example.com/document.pdf

# Process an image from a URL
mistral-ocr process https://example.com/image.jpg

# Save output to a file
mistral-ocr process path/to/document.pdf --output-file results.json

# Include base64 encoded images in the output
mistral-ocr process path/to/document.pdf --include-images

Convert OCR JSON to Markdown

Convert previously processed OCR JSON results to Markdown:

# Convert OCR JSON to Markdown
mistral-ocr convert results.json

# Specify output directory
mistral-ocr convert results.json --output-dir output_folder

# Create a single markdown file instead of one per page
mistral-ocr convert results.json --single-file

# Specify output filename for single file mode
mistral-ocr convert results.json --output-file document.md

# Include images in markdown (if available in JSON)
mistral-ocr convert results.json --images

Process and Convert in One Step

Process a document and convert to Markdown in a single command:

# Process document and generate markdown files
mistral-ocr markdown path/to/document.pdf

# Generate a single markdown file instead of separate files per page
mistral-ocr markdown path/to/document.pdf --single-file

# Specify output directory for markdown files
mistral-ocr markdown https://example.com/document.pdf --output-dir docs

# Specify a specific output file path (implies single file)
mistral-ocr markdown path/to/document.pdf --output-file docs/result.md

# Save intermediate JSON and generate markdown files
mistral-ocr markdown path/to/document.pdf --json-file results.json --output-dir docs

This command combines the process and convert steps, creating markdown files directly from the document.

Version information

mistral-ocr version

Examples

Process a local PDF and save the output

mistral-ocr process ~/Documents/sample.pdf --output-file results.json

Process a document from a URL

mistral-ocr process https://arxiv.org/pdf/2201.04234 > output.json

Convert OCR JSON to Markdown files

# Create separate files (one per page)
mistral-ocr convert output.json --output-dir markdown_docs

# Create a single file with all pages
mistral-ocr convert output.json --single-file --output-dir markdown_docs

# Create a single file with a specific filename
mistral-ocr convert output.json --output-file docs/paper.md

Process a document and generate markdown files in one step

# Generate separate files (one per page)
mistral-ocr markdown ~/Documents/research-paper.pdf --output-dir research_docs

# Generate a single markdown file
mistral-ocr markdown ~/Documents/research-paper.pdf --single-file --output-dir research_docs

# Generate a single markdown file with specific filename
mistral-ocr markdown ~/Documents/research-paper.pdf --output-file research_docs/paper.md

License

MIT