Process Documents And Any Other Files With TaskLift

TaskLift now features a powerful combination: the File Uploads tool allows AI to read and write files directly within your chat. Paired with the Command Line or other private or computer tools, this enables AI (and you) to perform arbitrary processing on any file type you upload—not just images. You can transform, analyze, or convert files, then share results in the chat, download them, or use them as inputs for further steps.

Curious to see it in action? Let's dig in.

From Images to Anything

Many AI apps offer "PDF support" or "document chat" as a fixed feature, with a single hardcoded way to extract text or answer questions. TaskLift takes a radically different approach: anything that can be done with a file on a computer, you can expect to be possible here - as long as the AI knows how (and it's often pretty good at it), or you guide it (even if using AI as a co-pilot), or both.

This means you’re not limited to one-size-fits-all conversions. You can design your own flows, turn them into reusable assistants, and call them from any chat. Whether it’s PDFs, DOCX, ZIPs, videos, or something more exotic, TaskLift now enables you to process, transform, and interact with your files however you want. Without having to write a single line of code.

This opens up a world of possibilities for custom workflows tailored to your specific needs. Let's explore some examples.

Talk to Your Docs

Imagine you upload a PDF and want to extract its text for analysis. In TaskLift, you (or the AI) can:

1. Pull your PDF into a disposable private machine that TaskLift provides OOTB.
2. Install pdftotext.
3. Run pdftotext on your uploaded PDF to generate a .txt file.
4. Have the AI upload the resulting text file back into the chat, making it available for download.
5. Ask the AI to answer questions about the content, summarize it, or extract data—just like a "chat with PDF" feature, but fully transparent and customizable.

Want to do OCR on a scanned PDF instead? Just switch to tesseract or another OCR tool. Need images from the PDF? Convert pages to JPGs and let the AI analyze them visually. The same approach works for DOCX, spreadsheets, or any format supported by Linux tools.

Media & More

The possibilities go far beyond documents. Suppose you upload a video and ask the AI to crop it. In such a case, the AI can for instance:

1. Install ffmpeg.
2. Run the appropriate commands to crop or convert the video.
3. Upload the processed video back to the chat for instant preview and download.

TaskLift’s preview system supports media files (images, audio, video), PDFs, plain text, and even code files with syntax highlighting for hundreds of languages. You can see results right in the chat, share them, or use them as building blocks for further automation.

Your Cases, Your Flow

These are just starting points. You could:

• Extract tables from Excel files and convert them to CSV for analysis.
• Transcribe audio files to text and summarize the content.
• Batch-process ZIP archives, images, or datasets for custom AI tasks.
• Chain together multiple tools—like OCR, translation, and summarization—into a single assistant workflow.

The best part? You can figure out the flow step-by-step in a chat, then turn it into a reusable assistant for yourself or your team. This "zero-code, chat-driven automation" is at the heart of TaskLift—empowering you to create, refine, and share powerful file processing tools.

Ready to go beyond basic uploads? Try TaskLift’s new  Uploading And Storing Files feature today. Experiment, invent your own workflows, and see just how far you and your AI can go together.