Convert Markdown Checklist to Jira and Slack

How the Checklist Formatter works

Convert Markdown checklist to Jira: getting a good result

Checklists are written once and then pasted into three or four places that all disagree about syntax. GitHub, Obsidian, Notion and every static site generator understand Markdown task lists. Jira does not. Slack does not. So the list that renders as a neat set of checkboxes in one place arrives as literal square brackets in another.

What Jira wants. Jira's wiki markup has no checkbox syntax, but it does have status icons: (/) renders as a green tick and (x) as a red cross. Those are what a converted checklist uses, and they render in issue descriptions and comments wherever the wiki markup editor is enabled. The newer rich-text editor in Jira Cloud converts them as you paste, which is usually what you want.

What Slack wants. Slack has no checkbox markup either, so the convention is emoji: :white_check_mark: for done and :white_large_square: for outstanding. Typing those shortcodes into a Slack message renders them as the emoji, and the list reads as a checklist to anyone looking at it. The plain emoji option skips the shortcodes and uses the characters directly, which is what you need for anywhere that renders Unicode but does not understand Slack's colon syntax — Trello cards, calendar invites, plain email.

Indentation survives. Nested items are how a checklist expresses subtasks, and losing that nesting turns a structured plan into a flat pile. Leading whitespace is captured and re-applied, so a two-level list stays two levels deep. Jira and Slack both honour leading spaces for visual indentation even where they do not treat it as a real list.

Done states are read, not guessed. - [x] and - [X] both count as complete; - [ ] is outstanding. Numbered task lists — 1. [ ] — are recognised too, since several editors emit them. Anything that is not a task item is passed through untouched, so paragraphs and blank lines between sections stay where they are. Markdown headings are the exception in Jira mode: ## Title becomes h2. Title, so the heading level survives.

Dropping completed items turns a working checklist into a status update: what is left, without the noise of what is finished. That is usually the version worth pasting into a stand-up channel.

Plain bullets as unchecked items handles the common case where a list was written as ordinary bullets and only later needed to be a checklist. Turn it on and every - bullet becomes an outstanding item; leave it off and plain bullets pass through as they are.

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