Every page, copied out as Markdown.
Carbone reads PDFs and scanned pages as you would: headings as headings, lists as lists, tables as tables. It keeps every copy in a library you can search, and your agents can read. Nothing is uploaded.
Headings stay headings. Tables stay tables.
OCR gives you the words. Carbone gives you the document: its headings, its lists and its tables, in the order you read them, without the page numbers. And for every block it writes, it keeps the region of the page it came from.
Point at a block, or tab to it · Carbone's Markdown for this page, unedited · read from its text layer in 0.07 s on an M5 Max
A digital PDF never goes through OCR.
Carbone looks at each page on its own. Where the PDF carries its text, Carbone reads that: exact to the character, in hundredths of a second. Only the pages without it, scans and photos, go through OCR, with Apple's Vision on the Mac's Neural Engine.
- p.1 text
- p.2 text
- p.3 text
- p.4 text
- p.5 text
- p.6 text
- p.7 text
- p.8 text
- p.9 text
- p.10 text
- p.11 OCR
- p.12 OCR
The PDF's own characters, with their fonts and positions. Nothing is guessed, so nothing is misread.
Apple's Vision reads the scan into paragraphs, lists and tables. Slower, and the only way to read paper.
An illustration · per-page times from the two demo pages on this site, on an M5 Max
Every copy kept, grouped and searchable.
A converter hands you a file and forgets it. Carbone keeps the document, its pages and every Markdown copy made of it, sorted into your groups, and finds a word in any of them.
Add files or whole folders. Carbone keeps a reference to each, never a copy, and says so when one goes missing.
Drop a hundred PDFs and carry on. They convert one after the other, and every conversion is kept.
Words found across the whole library, with the page they're on. Sort by date added, name, pages or size.
Your agent reads the page, not the PDF.
Carbone serves its library to agents on the same Mac over MCP. Claude Code, Codex or any other client searches every document, reads the pages it needs as Markdown, and quotes them with the page they came from. No upload, and no 40-page PDF poured into a context window.
- Off until you turn it on Settings › MCP Server. Until then nothing listens.
- 127.0.0.1:8809, nowhere else Only programs on this Mac can reach it, with a token kept in your Keychain.
- Your folders, no others It adds files only from the folders you allow, and writes only into them.
- Reading is the default List, search, read a page range, look at a page. Adding, converting and exporting wait for Allow writes.
A binder, page by page, hands-free.
Put the pages under a document camera and turn them. Any camera the Mac sees will do: a document camera, an iPhone through Continuity Camera, or Desk View.
- 01 Turn the page Carbone captures it once it holds still, and tells it from the last one by its ink.
- 02 Straightened Perspective and rotation corrected. When it misses a corner, set the corners by hand.
- 03 One document Finish, and the pages land in the library as one document, ready to convert.
Auto, or capture by hand with Space or Return.
Your papers never leave the Mac.
Tax notices, deeds, medical letters: the documents worth converting are the ones you'd least like to upload.
- No account Nothing to sign up for, nothing to sign in to.
- No upload Every page is read on this Mac, by the text layer or by Apple's Vision.
- No connection out Carbone doesn't carry the entitlement to open one. The MCP server only listens, on 127.0.0.1, when you turn it on.
codesign -d --entitlements - /Applications/Carbone.app
Free to convert. Pro for your agents.
Everything that turns paper into Markdown is free. Carbone Pro is one purchase, not a subscription.
- The library: files and folders, groups, search
- The queue, one document at a time
- Text layer and OCR, routed page by page
- Document-camera capture
- Markdown copy and export
- Everything in Carbone
- The MCP server, for your agents
- Downloadable models for the hardest pages later
- Searchable-PDF export later
One purchase, on the App Store, for every Mac signed in to your Apple Account.
What files does Carbone read?
PDF, PNG, JPEG, HEIC and TIFF. Add files or whole folders; Carbone keeps a reference to each where it lies and never copies or moves it.
Is a PDF with a text layer run through OCR?
No. Each page takes its own route: a page with usable text is read from the PDF itself, which is exact and takes a few hundredths of a second, and only pages without it, scans and photos, go through OCR. A contract scanned back in after signing is read both ways, page by page.
Does anything leave my Mac?
No. There is no account and no server, and Carbone has no permission to open a network connection. The MCP server is off until you turn it on, and then it listens on 127.0.0.1 only, so only programs on the same Mac can reach it.
Which agents can read my library?
Any MCP client on the same Mac: Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex and the rest. They list, search and read documents a page range at a time, with every page marked so a quote can be traced to it. Writing tools (adding files, converting, exporting) stay off until you allow them.
How is this different from Live Text or Preview?
Live Text copies the words you select, as plain text. Carbone converts whole documents, in a queue, into Markdown that keeps the structure: headings as headings, lists as lists, tables as tables. And it keeps what it converted, in a library you can search.
Can it capture paper with a camera?
Yes, with any camera the Mac sees: a document camera, an iPhone through Continuity, or Desk View. Turn the pages and Carbone takes each one once it holds still, tells it from the last, and straightens it. You can also capture by hand, or set a page's corners yourself.
What do I need?
A Mac running macOS 26 or later. The iPhone and iPad apps come later.
Transcription with speaker labels for Mac, iPhone and iPad. Carbone copies out what was written; Cadence writes down what was said. Both on device.
Visit Cadence ↗
Names, dates, places and sources in one private tree the whole family adds to over iCloud. For the people in the papers you scan.
Visit Filiation ↗
Make a carbon copy of the paper pile.
Carbone is nearly ready for the Mac. Leave a word and we'll write once, the day it's out.