diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index a52e4ee3..87c02a81 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,15 +1,16 @@
 # Changelog
 ## [Unreleased]
 
-## [0.16.1] - 2025-11-14
-
-### Changed
-
 - **BREAKING: Chunking Tokenizer**: Switched from tiktoken to HuggingFace tokenizers for consistency with docling-serve
   - Default tokenizer changed from tiktoken "gpt-4o" to "Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B"
   - New `chunking_tokenizer` config option in `ProcessingConfig` for customization
   - Removed `tiktoken` dependency
   - `download-models` CLI command now also downloads the configured HuggingFace tokenizer
+
+## [0.16.1] - 2025-11-14
+
+### Changed
+
 - **Evaluations**: Refactored QA benchmark to run entire dataset as single evaluation for better Logfire experiment tracking
 - **Evaluations**: Added `.env` file loading support via `python-dotenv` dependency
 
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 99637f64..4325c308 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -9,14 +9,14 @@ Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) library built on LanceDB.
 - **Local LanceDB**: No external servers required, supports also LanceDB cloud storage, S3, Google Cloud & Azure
 - **Multiple embedding providers**: Ollama, VoyageAI, OpenAI, vLLM
 - **Multiple QA providers**: Any provider/model supported by Pydantic AI
-- **Research graph (multi‑agent)**: Plan → Search → Evaluate → Synthesize with agentic AI
 - **Native hybrid search**: Vector + full-text search with native LanceDB RRF reranking
 - **Reranking**: Default search result reranking with MixedBread AI, Cohere, Zero Entropy, or vLLM
 - **Question answering**: Built-in QA agents on your documents
+- **Research graph (multi‑agent)**: Plan → Search → Evaluate → Synthesize with agentic AI
 - **File monitoring**: Auto-index files when run as server
-- **40+ file formats**: PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, code files, URLs
-- **MCP server**: Expose as tools for AI assistants
 - **CLI & Python API**: Use from command line or Python
+- **MCP server**: Expose as tools for AI assistants
+- **Flexible document processing**: Local (docling) or remote (docling-serve) processing
 
 ## Installation
 
diff --git a/docs/configuration.md b/docs/configuration.md
index cc34c9e6..26961fb7 100644
--- a/docs/configuration.md
+++ b/docs/configuration.md
@@ -98,6 +98,12 @@ processing:
   chunk_size: 256
   context_chunk_radius: 0
   markdown_preprocessor: ""
+  converter: docling-local  # docling-local or docling-serve
+  chunker: docling-local    # docling-local or docling-serve
+  chunker_type: hybrid      # hybrid or hierarchical
+  chunking_tokenizer: "Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B"
+  chunking_merge_peers: true
+  chunking_use_markdown_tables: false
 
 providers:
   ollama:
@@ -108,6 +114,11 @@ providers:
     rerank_base_url: ""
     qa_base_url: ""
     research_base_url: ""
+
+  docling_serve:
+    base_url: http://localhost:5001
+    api_key: ""
+    timeout: 300
 ```
 
 ## Programmatic Configuration
@@ -199,11 +210,86 @@ monitor:
 ```
 
 Patterns follow [gitignore syntax](https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore#_pattern_format):
+
 - `*` matches anything except `/`
 - `**` matches zero or more directories
 - `?` matches any single character
 - `[abc]` matches any character in the set
 
+## Document Processing
+
+Configure how documents are converted and chunked:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  # Chunking configuration
+  chunk_size: 256                            # Maximum tokens per chunk
+  context_chunk_radius: 0                    # Context radius for chunk expansion
+  markdown_preprocessor: ""                  # Optional preprocessor script
+
+  # Converter selection
+  converter: docling-local                   # docling-local or docling-serve
+
+  # Chunker selection and configuration
+  chunker: docling-local                     # docling-local or docling-serve
+  chunker_type: hybrid                       # hybrid or hierarchical
+  chunking_tokenizer: "Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B"  # HuggingFace model for tokenization
+  chunking_merge_peers: true                 # Merge undersized successive chunks
+  chunking_use_markdown_tables: false        # Use markdown tables vs narrative format
+```
+
+### Local vs Remote Processing
+
+**Local processing** (default):
+
+- Uses `docling` library locally
+- No external dependencies
+- Good for development and small workloads
+
+**Remote processing** (docling-serve):
+
+- Offloads processing to docling-serve API
+- Better for heavy workloads and production
+- Requires docling-serve instance (see [Remote processing setup](remote-processing.md))
+
+To use remote processing:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  converter: docling-serve
+  chunker: docling-serve
+
+providers:
+  docling_serve:
+    base_url: http://localhost:5001
+    api_key: "your-api-key"  # Optional
+    timeout: 300              # Request timeout in seconds
+```
+
+### Chunking Strategies
+
+**Hybrid chunking** (default):
+- Structure-aware chunking
+- Respects document boundaries
+- Best for most use cases
+
+**Hierarchical chunking**:
+- Creates hierarchical chunk structure
+- Preserves document hierarchy
+- Useful for complex documents
+
+### Table Serialization
+
+Control how tables are represented in chunks:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  chunking_use_markdown_tables: false  # Default: narrative format
+```
+
+- `false`: Tables as narrative text ("Value A, Column 2 = Value B")
+- `true`: Tables as markdown (preserves table structure)
+
 ## Embedding Providers
 
 If you use Ollama, you can use any pulled model that supports embeddings.
diff --git a/docs/index.md b/docs/index.md
index ac35679e..b14b2adb 100644
--- a/docs/index.md
+++ b/docs/index.md
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 - **Question Answering**: Built-in QA agents using Ollama, OpenAI, or Anthropic
 - **File monitoring**: Automatically index files when run as a server
 - **Extended file format support**: Parse 40+ file formats including PDF, DOCX, HTML, Markdown, code files and more. Or add a URL!
+- **Flexible document processing**: Local processing with docling or remote with [docling-serve](remote-processing.md)
 - **MCP server**: Exposes functionality as MCP tools
 - **CLI commands**: Access all functionality from your terminal
   - Add sources from text, files, or URLs, optionally with a human‑readable title
@@ -60,6 +61,7 @@ haiku-rag ask "Who is the author of haiku.rag?"
 - [MCP](mcp.md) - Model Context Protocol integration
 - [Python](python.md) - Python API reference
 - [Agents](agents.md) - QA agent and multi-agent research
+- [Remote processing](remote-processing.md) - Remote document processing with docling-serve
 
 ## License
 
diff --git a/docs/installation.md b/docs/installation.md
index 5dc0e782..7e8f4a4d 100644
--- a/docs/installation.md
+++ b/docs/installation.md
@@ -58,7 +58,20 @@ You can prefetch all required runtime models before first use:
 haiku-rag download-models
 ```
 
-This will download Docling models and pull any Ollama models referenced by your current configuration.
+This will download:
+- Docling models for document processing
+- HuggingFace tokenizer models for chunking
+- Any Ollama models referenced by your current configuration
+
+## Remote Processing (Optional)
+
+When using `haiku.rag-slim`, you can skip installing the `docling` extra and instead use [docling-serve](https://github.com/docling-project/docling-serve) for remote document processing. This is useful for:
+
+- Keeping dependencies minimal
+- Offloading heavy document processing to a dedicated service
+- Production deployments with separate processing infrastructure
+
+See [Remote processing](remote-processing.md) for setup instructions and [Document Processing](configuration.md#document-processing) for configuration options.
 
 ## Docker
 
diff --git a/docs/remote-processing.md b/docs/remote-processing.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..42d6be71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/remote-processing.md
@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+# Remote Processing
+
+`haiku.rag` can use [docling-serve](https://github.com/docling-project/docling-serve) for remote document processing and chunking, offloading resource-intensive operations to a dedicated service.
+
+## Overview
+
+docling-serve is a REST API service that provides:
+
+- Document conversion (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, images, etc.)
+- Intelligent chunking with structure preservation
+- OCR capabilities for scanned documents
+- Table and figure extraction
+
+## When to Use docling-serve
+
+**Use local processing (default) when:**
+
+- Working with small to medium document volumes
+- Running on development machines
+- Want zero external dependencies
+- Processing simple document formats
+
+**Use docling-serve when:**
+
+- Processing large volumes of documents
+- Working with complex PDFs requiring OCR
+- Running in production environments
+- Want to separate compute-intensive tasks
+- Need to scale document processing independently
+
+## Setup
+
+### Running docling-serve
+
+See the [official docling-serve repository](https://github.com/docling-project/docling-serve) for installation options. The quickest way is using Docker:
+
+```bash
+docker run -p 5001:5001 -e DOCLING_SERVE_ENABLE_UI=1 quay.io/docling-project/docling-serve
+```
+
+### Configuration
+
+Configure haiku.rag to use docling-serve. See the [Document Processing section in Configuration](configuration.md#document-processing) for all available options.
+
+```yaml
+# haiku.rag.yaml
+processing:
+  converter: docling-serve  # Use remote conversion
+  chunker: docling-serve    # Use remote chunking
+
+providers:
+  docling_serve:
+    base_url: http://localhost:5001
+    api_key: ""     # Optional API key for authentication
+    timeout: 300    # Request timeout in seconds
+```
+
+## Features
+
+### Remote Document Conversion
+
+When `converter: docling-serve` is configured, documents are sent to the docling-serve API for conversion:
+
+```python
+from haiku.rag.client import HaikuRAG
+
+async with HaikuRAG() as client:
+    # PDF is processed by docling-serve
+    doc = await client.create_document_from_file("complex.pdf")
+```
+
+### Remote Chunking
+
+When `chunker: docling-serve` is configured, chunking is performed remotely:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  chunker: docling-serve
+  chunker_type: hybrid              # or hierarchical
+  chunk_size: 256
+  chunking_tokenizer: "Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-0.6B"
+  chunking_merge_peers: true
+  chunking_use_markdown_tables: false
+```
+
+## Advanced Configuration
+
+### Custom Tokenizers
+
+You can use any HuggingFace tokenizer model:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  chunking_tokenizer: "bert-base-uncased"  # Or any HF model
+```
+
+### Chunking Strategies
+
+**Hybrid Chunking** (default):
+
+- Best for most documents
+- Preserves semantic boundaries
+- Structure-aware splitting
+
+**Hierarchical Chunking**:
+
+- Maintains document hierarchy
+- Better for deeply nested documents
+- Preserves parent-child relationships
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  chunker_type: hierarchical
+```
+
+### Table Handling
+
+Control how tables are represented:
+
+```yaml
+processing:
+  chunking_use_markdown_tables: true  # Preserve table structure
+```
+
+- `false` (default): Tables as narrative text
+- `true`: Tables as markdown format
+
+## Resources
+
+- [docling-serve GitHub](https://github.com/docling-project/docling-serve)
+- [docling-serve Documentation](https://github.com/docling-project/docling-serve#readme)
diff --git a/mkdocs.yml b/mkdocs.yml
index 4a686f98..1604399e 100644
--- a/mkdocs.yml
+++ b/mkdocs.yml
@@ -64,6 +64,7 @@ nav:
       - Python: python.md
       - Agents: agents.md
       - Server: server.md
+      - Remote processing: remote-processing.md
       - MCP: mcp.md
       - Benchmarks: benchmarks.md
 markdown_extensions: