diff --git a/_primitives/tomd.sh b/_primitives/tomd.sh
index 7182f7d..c66dbc2 100755
--- a/_primitives/tomd.sh
+++ b/_primitives/tomd.sh
@@ -8,16 +8,20 @@ set -euo pipefail
 
 check_deps() {
   local missing=()
-  command -v pandoc  >/dev/null 2>&1 || missing+=("pandoc  (brew install pandoc)")
   command -v python3 >/dev/null 2>&1 || missing+=("python3 (system)")
   command -v jq      >/dev/null 2>&1 || missing+=("jq      (brew install jq)")
   if [ "${#missing[@]}" -gt 0 ]; then
-    echo "[tomd] missing prerequisites:" >&2
+    echo "[tomd] missing core prerequisites:" >&2
     for m in "${missing[@]}"; do echo "[tomd]   - $m" >&2; done
-    echo "[tomd] hint: brew install pandoc jq && pip3 install pymupdf4llm openpyxl" >&2
+    echo "[tomd] hint: brew install jq && pip3 install pymupdf4llm openpyxl" >&2
     exit 1
   fi
 }
+need_pandoc() {
+  command -v pandoc >/dev/null 2>&1 && return 0
+  echo "[tomd] pandoc required for this format. Install: brew install pandoc" >&2
+  exit 1
+}
 
 detect_format() {
   local f="$1"
@@ -53,6 +57,7 @@ PYEOF
 }
 
 convert_pandoc() {
+  need_pandoc
   local from="${2:-}"
   if [ -n "$from" ]; then pandoc -f "$from" -t markdown --wrap=none "$1"
   else pandoc -t markdown --wrap=none "$1"; fi
@@ -63,6 +68,7 @@ convert_doc() {
     echo "[tomd] .doc: textutil not available (macOS only). Convert to .docx first." >&2
     exit 1
   fi
+  need_pandoc
   local tmp; tmp=$(mktemp /tmp/tomd-XXXX.html)
   textutil -convert html -output "$tmp" "$1"
   pandoc -f html -t markdown --wrap=none "$tmp"; rm -f "$tmp"