Developers

nctools, in your terminal

The same document tools as nctools.eu, as a scriptable CLI. Convert PDFs, extract OCR text, merge files and build document pipelines — offline, with zero uploads. Run everywhere Node.js runs: Windows, macOS and Linux.

Install

Requires Node.js 20+.

npm (recommended)

$ npm install -g @nctools/cli

Installs the nctools command on your PATH.

npx — no install

$ npx @nctools/cli --help

Run any subcommand without installing.

Build from source

$ git clone https://github.com/ncore-org/nctools-cli
cd nctools-cli
npm install
npm run build
npm run link

Latest main-branch build. Requires a working Node toolchain.

Check your install

$ nctools --version
nctools --help
nctools pdf-to-word --help

The nctools command exposes all 8 tools.

@nctools/cli on npm GitHub Releases

All 8 tools

paste-to-pdfTurn pasted text into a PDF

pdf-to-wordConvert PDF → DOCX

pdf-to-excelConvert PDF → XLSX

pdf-to-ocrAdd a searchable OCR layer

ocr-to-textExtract text from images/scans

photo-scannerScan photos to clean PDF

images-to-pdfCombine images into one PDF

merge-pdfMerge multiple PDFs into one

One-shot examples

PDF → Word

$ nctools pdf-to-word invoice.pdf --out invoice.docx

PDF → Excel

$ nctools pdf-to-excel ./statements/*.pdf --out-dir ./sheets

OCR a scanned PDF

$ nctools pdf-to-ocr scan.pdf --out scan-searchable.pdf

Extract text from a photo

$ nctools ocr-to-text receipt.jpg --out receipt.txt

Merge PDFs

$ nctools merge-pdf a.pdf b.pdf c.pdf --out combined.pdf

Images → one PDF

$ nctools images-to-pdf page1.png page2.png --out booklet.pdf

Paste text → PDF

$ echo "Hello world" | nctools paste-to-pdf --out hello.pdf

Zero uploads

Every conversion runs locally on your machine. Your documents never leave your computer.

Open source

MIT-licensed monorepo. Each tool is a standalone package — reuse, fork, or publish your own.

Scriptable

Stable exit codes and JSON mode make the CLI perfect for CI pipelines and cron jobs.