LiteParse, our OSS document parser, is really good at parsing complex PDF layouts, text, and tables into a clean spatial grid. The best part…

LiteParse, our OSS document parser, is really good at parsing complex PDF layouts, text, and tables into a clean spatial grid. The best part is it doesn't use VLMs or any ML models at all. It's entirely heuristics based and super fast ⚡️ The secret lies in our sophisticated grid projection algorithm. This blog post by @LoganMarkewich gives a comprehensive walkthrough on how it works: 1️⃣ Sort lines based on similar Y coordinates 2️⃣ Extract left, right, and center anchors 3️⃣ Classify every text item into one of these anchors 4️⃣ Project every text item into a grid column (the exception is any paragraph of flowing text, which is rendered separately) 5️⃣ For any item projected into a grid column, that item is the forward anchor for all subsequent text items with the same anchor 6️⃣ Postprocess the final outputs to remove extraneous spaces and margins As an example, take a look at the results below. You can see text in the left column, with a nicely overlaid table on the right. LiteParse is fully free and open-source, you can use it today! Either directly through the CLI or integrated into your coding agent. Blog: https://www.llamaindex.ai/blog/how-liteparse-turns-pdfs-into-text-a-deep-dive-into-the-grid-projection-algorithm?utm_medium=socials&utm_source=xjl&utm_campaign=2026-apr- LiteParse repo: https://github.com/run-llama/liteparse LiteParse: our open-source, layout-aware PDF parser for AI agents. The secret? Grid projection. Instead of heavy ML layout models or flat text extraction, it projects text onto a monospace grid so alignment preserves structure. Full deep dive into the grid projection algorithm be…

Source: Jerry Liu (X) | 2026-04-22