# Ingest any document format into your knowledge base with the Docling Reader

> The DoclingReader provides a single, unified interface for processing the full range of document formats an AI agent encounters — PDFs, Word files, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, images, and…

- Published: 2026-03-17
- Author: Agno Team
- Category: Changelog
- Canonical: https://agno-com-nine.vercel.app/articles/ingest-any-document-format-into-your-knowledge-base-with-the-docling-reader
- Markdown: https://agno-com-nine.vercel.app/articles/ingest-any-document-format-into-your-knowledge-base-with-the-docling-reader.md

The `DoclingReader` provides a single, unified interface for processing the full range of document formats an AI agent encounters — PDFs, Word files, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets, images, and even audio and video files — all through the same reader, without format-specific ingestion logic or a sprawling set of dependencies. Built on IBM Research's open-source Docling library, it preserves document structure (headings, tables, hierarchies, formulas, and layout) during extraction, so context is not lost in translation before content reaches your vector store.

Details**:**

- Supports PDFs, `.docx`, `.pptx`, `.xlsx`, markup files, images (JPEG, PNG), and audio/video (MP4 and others via FFmpeg and Whisper)
- Structure-preserving extraction keeps tables, headings, and hierarchies intact for higher-quality RAG retrieval
- Outputs flow directly into Agno's chunking pipeline with no additional preprocessing required
- Configurable `output_format` supports Markdown (default), plain text, JSON, HTML, DocTags, and VTT for audio/video transcripts
- Load from local paths or directly from URLs with the same interface

See [Docling Reader docs.](https://docs.agno.com/knowledge/concepts/readers/docling-reader)