PDF MCP

Name: PDF MCP
Author: jztan

by jztanversion 3.7.0i★ –iRuns on your computer

Registry nameio.github.jztan/pdf-mcp

Install

Overview

Description from the maker (original English)

Agentic RAG over one PDF or a whole folder: hybrid search, selective page reads, tables, OCR.

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

These three are never merged into one score: opinions, measurements and popularity are different things.

User voiceiNo reviews yetReviews open together with accounts in a later step
Our basic checksi1 of 1 passedChecked from public information; code not scanned yet
UsageiNot measured yet★ –

What you can do with it

We have not written a plain-language summary for this one yet. Below are the facts we read from the registry.

Connection: Runs on your computer
Transport: stdio
Category: Docs, sheets & office work

Install

Pick the AI app you use, then copy the settings.

Before you install

Basic checks: 1 of 1 passed
Runs on your computer with your user’s permissions (files, network, apps).
You fill in yourself: PDF_MCP_CACHE_DIR, PDF_MCP_CACHE_TTL, PDF_MCP_CACHE_MAX_MB

You need

PyPIPython’s uv installed (for the uvx command)

Which app do you use?

ClaudeClaude CodeCursorVS CodeChatGPT

Pick your app above. We remember it, so next time the button says “Install in …”.

Download the maker’s .mcpb file

The link goes to the maker’s own file; we do not host or repackage it. Open the file and Claude Desktop installs it.

Run this in your terminal

claude mcp add pdf --env PDF_MCP_CACHE_DIR=your-value --env PDF_MCP_CACHE_TTL=your-value --env PDF_MCP_CACHE_MAX_MB=your-value -- uvx pdf-mcp

Fill in the empty values before running it.

Open in Cursor

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .cursor/mcp.json in your project, or ~/.cursor/mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "pdf-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_DIR": "your-value",
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_TTL": "your-value",
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_MAX_MB": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

Open in VS Code

Or copy the settings yourself

Paste into .vscode/mcp.json in your project

{
  "servers": {
    "pdf": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "pdf-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_DIR": "your-value",
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_TTL": "your-value",
        "PDF_MCP_CACHE_MAX_MB": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Your browser asks to open the app, then the app shows the settings and asks you to confirm. Key values are left empty for you to fill in.

This one runs on your computer, and ChatGPT can only connect to servers on the internet. Pick another app.

Your choice stays on this device in a cookie; no account needed.

Values you fill in

PDF_MCP_CACHE_DIR env
Directory for storing PDF cache (default: ~/.cache/pdf-mcp)
PDF_MCP_CACHE_TTL env
Optional time expiry in hours; unset keeps a document while its PDF exists
PDF_MCP_CACHE_MAX_MB env
Cache size cap in MB, least recently used evicted first (default: 2048; 0 = no cap)

These settings are generated from the maker’s registry entry. If the README says otherwise, follow the README.

What it can do

Runs on your computer; the tool list appears in your AI app after you install it.

Basic checksi

We check information anyone can see; we have not read the code. Checks that do not apply are left out of the count. · Checked Nov 8, 2026

✓ Pass
Maker matches the repo
The registry name was verified with the GitHub account jztan, which owns the repo
… Not checked yet
Still maintained
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
… Not checked yet
Has a licence
We have not read this repo from GitHub yet
– Not applicable
Endpoint responds
This one runs on your computer; there is no internet endpoint
– Not applicable
Sign-in with OAuth
Runs on your computer and uses local settings instead
… Not checked yet
No hidden instructions in tool descriptions
Runs on your computer; we can only read tool lists from internet endpoints

Compared with others in Docs, sheets & office worki

More stars than 0% of the other 3542 servers in this category
Published to the registry more recently than 95% of the other 3542 servers in this category
Basic checks equal to or better than 100% of the other 3542 servers in this category

Compared with every active server in this category in the registry. Stars count only when the publisher owns the repo.

Common questions

Is PDF MCP safe?

It passed 1 of 1 applicable basic checks. We have not read the code. Before adding a key or token, see what access the server asks for and use a key with only the permissions you need.

What keys or codes does it need?

The registry does not list a required key, though some servers ask you to sign in on first use.

Does it run on my computer or in the cloud?

It runs on your computer. Your AI app starts it when needed, and data does not pass through the maker’s servers (unless it calls an online service itself).

Is it still maintained?

The GitHub repo last changed –, and the latest version (3.7.0) reached the registry yesterday.

Which apps can use it?

Apps that support MCP, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor and VS Code. You also need Python (uv), MCPB on your computer.

What can I use instead?

In the same category: Agent-Native Calendar, Excel MCP Server, MCP Server for Excel

Alternatives

Servers in the same category from other makers, sorted by stars.

Reading a card:★ GitHub starsiThree pillars: reviews · checks · usageiUpdated = latest version published to the registryi

Agent-Native Calendar

by BuilderIO

Agent-Native Google Calendar - manage events, sync, and public booking

Runs in the cloud★ 7,620MITUpdated 2 months ago

Install

Excel MCP Server

by haris-musa

Lets AI create and edit Excel files itself, including formulas, charts and PivotTables, without Excel installed.

Runs on your computer★ 4,276MITUpdated 7 days ago

Install

MCP Server for Excel

by sbroenne

Excel automation for AI - Sheets, Power Query, DAX, VBA, Tables, Ranges and more. Windows only.

Runs on your computer★ 847MITUpdated 4 days ago

Install

README from the maker

Open the README

Copied from the maker’s repo as written. PopNx MCP has not reviewed or endorsed it. HTML, images and scripts are removed. Links lead off this site.

pdf-mcp

Agentic RAG over your PDFs, one file or a whole folder, as a single MCP tool.

The agent decides when to search; pdf-mcp does the retrieval and hands back excerpts. It is an MCP server that lets Claude Code and other AI agents search one PDF or a whole folder by meaning or keyword, read only the pages that matter, and cleanly pull out tables, images, and scanned text, even from multi-column and Japanese layouts, with optional CUDA acceleration for warming large corpora.

mcp-name: io.github.jztan/pdf-mcp

Try it in your browser

[See what your AI agent sees →](https://pdf-mcp.jztan.com/)

Drop in any PDF, or a whole folder of them, and watch an agent triage the corpus, search across every document at once, and read only the pages that matter, using a fraction of the tokens. 100% client-side, no install required.

Why pdf-mcp?

	Without pdf-mcp	With pdf-mcp
Large PDFs	Context overflow	Read only the pages you need
Finding content	Load everything	Hybrid search: BM25 keyword + semantic
Folders of PDFs	One document at a time	Warm, triage, and search a whole folder
Warming a big folder	Minutes of CPU embedding	Length-sorted small-batch CPU encode; optional CUDA embedding, one to two orders of magnitude faster on an NVIDIA card
Tables and charts	Lost in raw text	Structured rows, and `(x, y)` data from vector charts
Multi-column and vertical layouts	Columns interleaved	Correct reading order, including Japanese tategaki
Scanned PDFs	No text at all	OCR via Tesseract, parallel across pages
Repeated access	Re-parse every time	SQLite cache that survives restarts
Hidden or injected text	Silently ingested	Flagged as untrusted, nothing stripped

Installation

Claude Desktop: nothing to install first

[Download pdf-mcp.mcpb](https://github.com/jztan/pdf-mcp/releases/latest/download/pdf-mcp.mcpb).
In Claude Desktop, open Settings > Extensions, drag the file onto that page, and click Install.
Ask Claude about a PDF by its location, for example "Use pdf-mcp to summarize C:\Users\me\Downloads\report.pdf", or about a whole folder.

The first start downloads pdf-mcp's components (about 250 MB) and can take a few minutes; later starts take seconds. OCR for scanned pages is included: the first scanned page downloads an English-only Tesseract (about 14 MB). Needs Windows 10 or later, or macOS 13 or later (14 on Apple Silicon), and works in Claude Desktop's Chat. Updating, uninstalling and other details are in docs/clients.md.

Claude Code and other MCP clients

Needs Python 3.11 to 3.14. On 3.15 the installer falls back to a very old release, because a dependency has no 3.15 build yet. Install the pdf-mcp command with uv or pipx:

uv tool install pdf-mcp     # or: pipx install pdf-mcp

pip install pdf-mcp works inside a virtual environment; Homebrew's Python and recent Debian and Ubuntu refuse a system-wide pip install.

Then add it to your client. For Claude Code:

claude mcp add pdf-mcp -- pdf-mcp

For VS Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Kiro or any other MCP client, see [docs/clients.md](docs/clients.md). Then ask your agent to read a PDF.

Search, the corpus tools, tables and multi-column and CJK reading order work out of the box. For non-English documents, see language support. OCR on scanned pages also needs Tesseract:

brew install tesseract                             # macOS

sudo apt install tesseract-ocr # Ubuntu/Debian winget install -e --id UB-Mannheim.TesseractOCR # Windows

Optional: CUDA embedding on an NVIDIA card warms large folders one to two orders of magnitude faster; see docs/configuration.md.

From Python

pdf-mcp's tools are also plain Python functions, so you can import them and hand a PDF to the Anthropic SDK without running a server. Two runnable scripts, for a question and for a whole document: [examples/](examples/).

Why this exists, and what broke along the way: Claude's 100-page PDF limit and how I got around it

Tools

13 specialized tools rather than one monolithic one. Typical pattern: pdf_info to plan, pdf_search to locate (its paragraph excerpts often answer the question outright), pdf_read_pages when you need more. For a folder, pdf_corpus_overview to triage, then pdf_corpus_search.

Tool	What it does
`pdf_info`	Page count, metadata, TOC summary, scanned-page detection. Call first.
`pdf_search`	Hybrid search (keyword + semantic) by page or section; hits carry an excerpt, source coordinates, the enclosing outline section and a table's lead-in sentence
`pdf_read_pages`	Read specific pages or ranges, with OCR on demand, tables, and embedded images
`pdf_read_all`	Read a whole document in one call, byte-capped
`pdf_get_toc`	Full table of contents for documents with many bookmarks
`pdf_render_pages`	Render pages as PNG for vision models: diagrams, handwriting, scans
`pdf_extract_chart`	Chart data as exact `(x, y)` tables, read from plot geometry
`pdf_corpus_warm`	Warm a folder of PDFs into the cache within a time budget
`pdf_corpus_overview`	Per-document triage cards for a folder
`pdf_corpus_search`	Search across a folder; hits carry document and page provenance
`pdf_cache_stats`	Per-document cache breakdown and total size
`pdf_cache_clear`	Clear expired or all cache entries
`server_info`	Which optional features and config are active

Text returned by any of these is untrusted content extracted from a PDF. pdf_info(content_trust=True) reports hidden text a human reader cannot see, and the read tools flag it per page.

Example prompts:

"Read the PDF at /path/to/document.pdf"

"Which pages discuss supply chain risks?" "Find sections about the training process" "Show me what page 5 looks like" "OCR pages 3-5 of the scanned PDF"

Full reference, every parameter and response shape: [docs/tool-reference.md](docs/tool-reference.md). Embedding model selection: [docs/embedding-models.md](docs/embedding-models.md).

Example Workflow

For a large document (e.g., a 200-page annual report):

User: "Summarize the risk factors in this annual report"

Agent workflow:

pdf_info("report.pdf") → 200 pages, TOC shows "Risk Factors" on page 89

pdf_search("report.pdf", "risk factors") → Matches with structural paragraph excerpts: each excerpt is the bullet, paragraph, or heading that matched, not a fixed-width window. Often enough to answer directly.

If excerpts are sufficient → synthesize answer

If more context needed: pdf_read_pages("report.pdf", "89-95") → Full page text for deeper reading

Remote / HTTP transport

STDIO is the default and is what every example above uses. pdf-mcp-http serves the same tools over HTTP, for clients that cannot spawn a process (the Anthropic API MCP connector, claude.ai custom connectors) and for a warm corpus shared by several clients.

export PDF_MCP_AUTH_TOKEN="$(openssl rand -hex 32)"

pdf-mcp-http

Paths resolve on the server, so an HTTP agent reads what is already there: files under an allow-listed root, or a URL the server fetches. It cannot hand over a file from its own machine. It is single-tenant and fails closed: with no auth token and no [paths] allow list, the process exits rather than serving an open endpoint.

Docker images are published to GHCR for amd64 and arm64, with everything baked in, so every tool works on the first request:

./deploy.sh              # token, image, start, health-check

cp your.pdf documents/ # this folder is the server's /data/pdfs

Read [docs/remote-access.md](docs/remote-access.md) for the trust boundary and threat model before deploying, and [docs/configuration.md](docs/configuration.md#http-transport-setup) for setup, client config, and token rotation.

Configuration

pdf-mcp works out of the box. To restrict which paths and URL hosts the server may touch, tune cache and worker settings, or add your own content-trust phrases, see [docs/configuration.md](docs/configuration.md).

Roadmap

See ROADMAP.md for planned features and release history.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. See [docs/contributing.md](docs/contributing.md) for setup, checks, the coherence eval harness, and quality-loop guidelines.

Contributors

Thank you to everyone who has helped improve this project through code, reviews, testing, and feature requests:

@Summer907 · @ebbsanchez · @VooDisss · @DerDennisOP · @deepdmk · @TheSOV · @janLo · @bbulkow · @HillsCloud · @phinnphace

Per-release contributor credits are listed in the Changelog.

Security

Found a vulnerability? See SECURITY.md for the threat model, reporting channel, and expected response timeline. Please do not open a public GitHub issue for unpatched security reports.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Blog posts

The story behind the releases. Building pdf-mcp keeps surprising me: benchmarks that go the wrong way, formats that break everything, features I had to remove. I write about that thinking in The Dispatch. Come along if that's your kind of thing.

Background, benchmarks, and design notes from building pdf-mcp:

Getting started

[How I Built pdf-mcp](https://blog.jztan.com/how-i-built-pdf-mcp-solving-claude-large-pdf-limitations/?utm_source=github&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=pdf-mcp&utm_content=list-how-i-built-pdf-mcp-solving-claude-large-pdf-limita

Only the beginning is shown; read the rest in the repo

PDF MCP

Overview

PopNx MCP’s three pillars

What you can do with it

Install

Before you install

Values you fill in

What it can do

Basic checksi

Maker matches the repo

Still maintained

Has a licence

Endpoint responds

Sign-in with OAuth

No hidden instructions in tool descriptions

Compared with others in Docs, sheets & office worki

Common questions

Alternatives

Agent-Native Calendar

Excel MCP Server

MCP Server for Excel

README from the maker

pdf-mcp

Try it in your browser

Why pdf-mcp?

Installation

Claude Desktop: nothing to install first

Claude Code and other MCP clients

From Python

Tools

Example Workflow

Remote / HTTP transport

Configuration

Roadmap

Contributing

Contributors

Security

License

Links

Blog posts