Docling is a production-grade Python library for converting diverse document formats (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, HTML, LaTeX, EPUB, images, audio, video, email, EBCDIC, and more) into a unified, structured `DoclingDocument` representation. It is designed to serve as the document understanding layer for AI workflows, particularly Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agentic AI, and document extraction pipelines. The system provides a rich Python SDK, a Typer-based CLI (`docling convert`), a service client for remote conversion via `docling-serve`, and an MCP server. It supports multiple output formats including Markdown, JSON, HTML, DocTags, and plain text. Architecturally, Docling employs a modular pipeline system with pluggable backends for each input format and a stage-based processing model. The core pipeline (`StandardPdfPipeline`, `VlmPipeline`, `AsrPipeline`) orchestrates page-level operations (preprocessing, OCR, layout detection, table structure recognition, picture classification, reading order) and document-level enrichments (code/formula extraction, heading hierarchy, picture description). Inference engines are abstracted behind factory patterns supporting ONNX Runtime, HuggingFace Transformers, vLLM, MLX, KServe v2, and remote APIs. The library integrates with over 20 OCR engines and vision-language models, and includes a plugin system for extensibility. Key entry points include the `DocumentConverter` class, the CLI (`docling.cli.main`), and the service client (`docling.service_client`). External dependencies span PDF libraries (pypdfium2, docling-parse), ML frameworks (torch, transformers, onnxruntime), OCR engines (Tesseract, EasyOCR, RapidOCR), and cloud services (KServe, Azure, S3). The codebase is actively maintained with frequent releases, extensive test coverage, and a clear migration path from legacy components.