diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 48254c3..99de387 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -627,8 +627,8 @@ backup:
 When `backup.minio.enabled` is configured, Flynn also exposes MinIO tools:
 
 - `minio.share`: upload a local file to the configured MinIO bucket and return a temporary download URL (`mc share download`)
-- `minio.ingest`: read a text-like object from MinIO and append/replace a memory namespace (useful for syncing notes/runbooks into long-term memory)
-- `minio.sync`: recursively ingest a MinIO prefix into nested memory namespaces with object and size limits
+- `minio.ingest`: read a text-like object (and PDF via `pdftotext` when available) from MinIO and append/replace a memory namespace
+- `minio.sync`: recursively ingest a MinIO prefix into nested memory namespaces with object and size limits (including PDF extraction when available)
 
 ## Kubernetes Tools
 
diff --git a/docs/api/TOOLS.md b/docs/api/TOOLS.md
index 45bd82c..ba639b6 100644
--- a/docs/api/TOOLS.md
+++ b/docs/api/TOOLS.md
@@ -968,7 +968,7 @@ Upload a local file to MinIO and return a temporary presigned download URL.
 
 #### `minio.ingest`
 
-Read a text-like object from MinIO and write it into a memory namespace.
+Read a text-like object from MinIO (and PDFs when `pdftotext` is available) and write it into a memory namespace.
 
 ```json
 {
@@ -1010,7 +1010,7 @@ Read a text-like object from MinIO and write it into a memory namespace.
 
 #### `minio.sync`
 
-Sync text-like objects from a MinIO prefix into nested memory namespaces.
+Sync text-like objects from a MinIO prefix into nested memory namespaces (with PDF extraction when available).
 
 ```json
 {
diff --git a/docs/plans/state.json b/docs/plans/state.json
index 489fb5a..c98647b 100644
--- a/docs/plans/state.json
+++ b/docs/plans/state.json
@@ -141,6 +141,22 @@
       ],
       "test_status": "pnpm test:run src/tools/builtin/k8s.test.ts src/tools/policy.test.ts src/config/schema.test.ts + pnpm typecheck passing"
     },
+    "minio-pdf-ingestion-support": {
+      "status": "completed",
+      "date": "2026-02-16",
+      "updated": "2026-02-16",
+      "summary": "Extended MinIO knowledge ingestion to support PDF documents via `pdftotext` extraction in both `minio.ingest` and `minio.sync` paths (when available), while preserving text-safety checks for other binary formats. Updated tests and docs accordingly.",
+      "files_modified": [
+        "src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.ts",
+        "src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.ts",
+        "src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts",
+        "src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts",
+        "README.md",
+        "docs/api/TOOLS.md",
+        "docs/plans/state.json"
+      ],
+      "test_status": "pnpm test:run src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts + pnpm typecheck passing"
+    },
     "backup-session-summary-audit-trail": {
       "status": "completed",
       "date": "2026-02-16",
diff --git a/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts b/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts
index 840a7d2..604bce4 100644
--- a/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts
+++ b/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.test.ts
@@ -31,10 +31,11 @@ describe('minio ingest internals', () => {
   it('accepts known text-like extensions', () => {
     expect(minioIngestInternals.isLikelyTextObject('notes/today.md')).toBe(true);
     expect(minioIngestInternals.isLikelyTextObject('logs/daemon.log')).toBe(true);
+    expect(minioIngestInternals.isLikelyTextObject('manual.pdf')).toBe(true);
   });
 
   it('rejects likely binary extensions', () => {
-    expect(minioIngestInternals.isLikelyTextObject('manual.pdf')).toBe(false);
+    expect(minioIngestInternals.isLikelyTextObject('manual.exe')).toBe(false);
   });
 });
 
@@ -72,18 +73,54 @@ describe('createMinioIngestTool', () => {
     );
   });
 
-  it('rejects likely binary object unless force=true', async () => {
+  it('rejects unsupported binary object unless force=true', async () => {
     const write = vi.fn();
     const store = { write } as unknown as MemoryStore;
     const execRunner = vi.fn();
     const tool = createMinioIngestTool(makeBackupConfig(), store, { execRunner });
 
-    const result = await tool.execute({ object_key: 'knowledge/diagram.pdf' });
+    const result = await tool.execute({ object_key: 'knowledge/diagram.docx' });
     expect(result.success).toBe(false);
     expect(result.error).toContain('Unsupported object type');
     expect(execRunner).not.toHaveBeenCalled();
   });
 
+  it('extracts PDF text with pdftotext', async () => {
+    const write = vi.fn();
+    const store = { write } as unknown as MemoryStore;
+    const execRunner = vi.fn(async (_file: string, args: string[]) => {
+      if (args[0] === 'cp') {
+        return { stdout: '', stderr: '' };
+      }
+      if (_file === 'pdftotext') {
+        return { stdout: 'Extracted PDF text', stderr: '' };
+      }
+      return { stdout: '', stderr: '' };
+    });
+    const tool = createMinioIngestTool(makeBackupConfig(), store, { execRunner });
+
+    const result = await tool.execute({
+      object_key: 'knowledge/diagram.pdf',
+      mode: 'replace',
+    });
+    expect(result.success).toBe(true);
+    expect(write).toHaveBeenCalledWith(
+      'global/knowledge',
+      expect.stringContaining('Extracted PDF text'),
+      'replace',
+    );
+    expect(execRunner).toHaveBeenCalledWith(
+      'mc',
+      expect.arrayContaining(['cp', 'flynningest/flynn-knowledge/knowledge/diagram.pdf']),
+      expect.objectContaining({ env: expect.any(Object) }),
+    );
+    expect(execRunner).toHaveBeenCalledWith(
+      'pdftotext',
+      expect.arrayContaining(['-q']),
+      expect.any(Object),
+    );
+  });
+
   it('allows non-text extension when force=true', async () => {
     const write = vi.fn();
     const store = { write } as unknown as MemoryStore;
diff --git a/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.ts b/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.ts
index 19ec287..0a03013 100644
--- a/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.ts
+++ b/src/tools/builtin/minio-ingest.ts
@@ -1,6 +1,9 @@
 import { promisify } from 'node:util';
 import { execFile } from 'node:child_process';
 import { extname } from 'node:path';
+import { mkdtempSync, rmSync } from 'node:fs';
+import { join } from 'node:path';
+import { tmpdir } from 'node:os';
 import type { BackupConfig } from '../../config/schema.js';
 import type { MemoryStore } from '../../memory/store.js';
 import type { Tool, ToolResult } from '../types.js';
@@ -12,7 +15,7 @@ type ExecRunner = (
   file: string,
   args: string[],
   options?: { env?: NodeJS.ProcessEnv; maxBuffer?: number },
-) => Promise<{ stdout: string; stderr: string }>;
+) => Promise<{ stdout: string | Buffer; stderr: string | Buffer }>;
 
 const TEXT_EXTENSIONS = new Set([
   '.txt',
@@ -29,6 +32,9 @@ const TEXT_EXTENSIONS = new Set([
   '.html',
   '.htm',
 ]);
+const EXTRACTABLE_BINARY_EXTENSIONS = new Set([
+  '.pdf',
+]);
 
 export interface MinioIngestDeps {
   execRunner?: ExecRunner;
@@ -42,12 +48,40 @@ function isLikelyText(content: string): boolean {
 function isLikelyTextObject(objectKey: string): boolean {
   const ext = extname(objectKey).toLowerCase();
   if (!ext) {return true;}
-  return TEXT_EXTENSIONS.has(ext);
+  return TEXT_EXTENSIONS.has(ext) || EXTRACTABLE_BINARY_EXTENSIONS.has(ext);
+}
+
+function isExtractableBinaryObject(objectKey: string): boolean {
+  return EXTRACTABLE_BINARY_EXTENSIONS.has(extname(objectKey).toLowerCase());
+}
+
+async function readObjectText(
+  runner: ExecRunner,
+  remotePath: string,
+  objectKey: string,
+  env: NodeJS.ProcessEnv,
+): Promise<string> {
+  if (!isExtractableBinaryObject(objectKey)) {
+    const { stdout } = await runner('mc', ['cat', remotePath], { env, maxBuffer: 20 * 1024 * 1024 });
+    return toText(stdout);
+  }
+
+  const tempDir = mkdtempSync(join(tmpdir(), 'flynn-minio-ingest-'));
+  const localPath = join(tempDir, 'object.bin');
+  try {
+    await runner('mc', ['cp', remotePath, localPath], { env, maxBuffer: 20 * 1024 * 1024 });
+    const { stdout } = await runner('pdftotext', ['-q', localPath, '-'], { maxBuffer: 20 * 1024 * 1024 });
+    return toText(stdout);
+  } finally {
+    rmSync(tempDir, { recursive: true, force: true });
+  }
 }
 
 export const minioIngestInternals = {
   isLikelyText,
   isLikelyTextObject,
+  isExtractableBinaryObject,
+  readObjectText,
 };
 
 interface MinioIngestArgs {
@@ -139,10 +173,9 @@ export function createMinioIngestTool(config: BackupConfig, store: MemoryStore,
       const remotePath = `${alias}/${bucket}/${objectKey}`;
 
       try {
-        const { stdout } = await runner('mc', ['cat', remotePath], { env, maxBuffer: 20 * 1024 * 1024 });
-        const text = typeof stdout === 'string' ? stdout : stdout.toString('utf-8');
+        const text = await readObjectText(runner, remotePath, objectKey, env);
 
-        if (!force && !isLikelyText(text)) {
+        if (!force && !isExtractableBinaryObject(objectKey) && !isLikelyText(text)) {
           return {
             success: false,
             output: '',
@@ -180,3 +213,6 @@ export function createMinioIngestTool(config: BackupConfig, store: MemoryStore,
     },
   };
 }
+function toText(value: string | Buffer): string {
+  return typeof value === 'string' ? value : value.toString('utf-8');
+}
diff --git a/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts b/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts
index ae109dc..c8fca2b 100644
--- a/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts
+++ b/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.test.ts
@@ -104,7 +104,7 @@ describe('createMinioSyncTool', () => {
     const store = { write } as unknown as MemoryStore;
     const execRunner = vi.fn(async (_file: string, args: string[]) => {
       if (args[0] === 'ls') {
-        return { stdout: '{"status":"success","type":"file","key":"knowledge/diagram.pdf"}', stderr: '' };
+        return { stdout: '{"status":"success","type":"file","key":"knowledge/diagram.docx"}', stderr: '' };
       }
       return { stdout: 'fake text', stderr: '' };
     });
diff --git a/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.ts b/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.ts
index 5033a91..51c3a33 100644
--- a/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.ts
+++ b/src/tools/builtin/minio-sync.ts
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ type ExecRunner = (
   file: string,
   args: string[],
   options?: { env?: NodeJS.ProcessEnv; maxBuffer?: number },
-) => Promise<{ stdout: string; stderr: string }>;
+) => Promise<{ stdout: string | Buffer; stderr: string | Buffer }>;
 
 interface MinioSyncArgs {
   prefix: string;
@@ -168,13 +168,9 @@ export function createMinioSyncTool(config: BackupConfig, store: MemoryStore, de
           }
 
           const remotePath = `${alias}/${bucket}/${key}`;
-          const { stdout: objectStdout } = await runner('mc', ['cat', remotePath], {
-            env,
-            maxBuffer: 20 * 1024 * 1024,
-          });
-          const text = typeof objectStdout === 'string' ? objectStdout : objectStdout.toString('utf-8');
+          const text = await minioIngestInternals.readObjectText(runner, remotePath, key, env);
 
-          if (!force && !minioIngestInternals.isLikelyText(text)) {
+          if (!force && !minioIngestInternals.isExtractableBinaryObject(key) && !minioIngestInternals.isLikelyText(text)) {
             skipped++;
             continue;
           }