How can I find page numbers and bounding box information for content in a chunk produced by the hybrid chunker, and what is the structure of the doc_items list within a chunk?

Page numbers and bounding box information for content in a chunk produced by the hybrid chunker are available through the chunk's provenance metadata. Specifically, each chunk has a meta.doc_items list, where each doc_item represents a discrete document element (such as a paragraph, list item, table, image, etc.). Each doc_item contains a prov list with provenance information, including:

page_no: the page number (integer)
bbox: the bounding box (with absolute coordinates: l, t, r, b)
charspan: the character span (start, end)

Note: Bounding box coordinates are absolute (pixels/points), not normalized. To normalize them to a 0–1.0 range, use the normalized() method on the bounding box and provide the page's size.

Example to extract page numbers:

for item in chunk.meta.doc_items:
    for prov in getattr(item, "prov", []):
        print(prov.page_no)

Why multiple doc_items per chunk? The hybrid chunker combines consecutive document elements (doc_items) into a chunk until a token limit is reached. For example, if three paragraphs fit within the token limit, all three will be included in the chunk's doc_items list. This allows you to trace which original document elements contributed to each chunk.

Table-aware chunking: When a table is too large to fit in a single chunk, the HybridChunker can automatically split it across multiple chunks while preserving context:

The repeat_table_header parameter (default: True) controls whether table headers are automatically repeated when tables are split. When enabled, each chunk containing table rows includes the header, making chunks self-contained and independently understandable. This is especially valuable when chunks are processed separately or stored in different locations
The omit_header_on_overflow parameter (default: False) controls behavior specifically when the table header itself exceeds max_tokens. When set to True, oversized headers are omitted from subsequent chunks; when False, headers are included even if they cause chunks to exceed max_tokens. This parameter is particularly useful for tables with very wide headers that might violate token limits
These behaviors can be adjusted by setting repeat_table_header=False or omit_header_on_overflow=True when initializing the chunker
Table header repetition is supported for both markdown and HTML-serialized tables

Example of HybridChunker with table header repetition:

from docling_core.transforms.chunker import HybridChunker

# Default behavior: table headers are repeated
chunker = HybridChunker(max_tokens=512)

# Disable header repetition if needed
chunker = HybridChunker(max_tokens=512, repeat_table_header=False)

# Handle wide tables with large headers using omit_header_on_overflow
chunker = HybridChunker(
    max_tokens=512,
    repeat_table_header=True,
    omit_header_on_overflow=True # Omit headers when they would cause overflow
)

Limitations:

Line numbers are not available.
DOCX files do not provide page or bounding box metadata; convert to PDF if you need this data.
Table items may have empty provenance lists, so page info may not be available for tables even in PDFs.

References:

from docling_core.transforms.chunker import HybridChunker # Default behavior: table headers are repeated chunker = HybridChunker(max_tokens=512) # Disable header repetition if needed chunker = HybridChunker(max_tokens=512, repeat_table_header=False) # Handle wide tables with large headers using omit_header_on_overflow chunker = HybridChunker( max_tokens=512, repeat_table_header=True, omit_header_on_overflow=True # Omit headers when they would cause overflow )