calibre-mcp

MCP server for Calibre book library management. Designed for use with Claude Code.

Talks to your local Calibre library via calibredb CLI — no Content Server needed.

Tools

Tool	Description
search_books	Search books using Calibre's query syntax (title:, author:, series:, etc.)
get_book_info	Get full metadata for a book by ID
get_epub_path	Get absolute EPUB file path (for downstream processing)
list_series	List all books in a series, sorted by index
get_custom_columns	List custom columns defined in the library
set_custom_column	Set or append custom column values for a book
set_metadata	Edit standard metadata fields (title, authors, tags, series, etc.)

Installation

Prerequisites

• Calibre installed with calibredb in PATH
• uv (for uvx)

Claude Code (from GitHub)

claude mcp add calibre -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/xmkevinchen/calibre-mcp.git calibre-mcp

Add -s user to make it available across all projects:

claude mcp add -s user calibre -- uvx --from git+https://github.com/xmkevinchen/calibre-mcp.git calibre-mcp

Or add to your project .mcp.json (project-level only):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "calibre": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/xmkevinchen/calibre-mcp.git", "calibre-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "CALIBRE_LIBRARY_PATH": "/path/to/Calibre Library"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code (local development)

claude mcp add calibre -- uvx --from /path/to/calibre-mcp calibre-mcp

Environment Variables

Variable	Description	Default
CALIBRE_LIBRARY_PATH	Path to Calibre library directory	~/Calibre Library
CALIBREDB_PATH	Path to calibredb binary	auto-detected via PATH

Usage Examples

Search for a book:

search_books("title:pirates past noon")

Get EPUB path for reading:

get_epub_path(247)  # returns /Users/you/Calibre Library/Author/Book (247)/book.epub

Browse a series:

list_series("Magic Tree House")

Updating

uvx caches installed packages. To pull the latest version:

uvx --reinstall --from git+https://github.com/xmkevinchen/calibre-mcp.git calibre-mcp

Then restart Claude Code to pick up the changes.

Troubleshooting

calibredb not found — Make sure Calibre is installed and calibredb is in your PATH. On macOS, Calibre installs CLI tools to /Applications/calibre.app/Contents/MacOS/. Add it to PATH or set CALIBREDB_PATH.

claude mcp add doesn't work — Use add-json instead:

claude mcp add-json -s user calibre '{"command":"uvx","args":["--from","git+https://github.com/xmkevinchen/calibre-mcp.git","calibre-mcp"],"env":{"CALIBRE_LIBRARY_PATH":"/path/to/Calibre Library"}}'

Or create .mcp.json manually in your project root (see above).

Roadmap

• [x] Search and retrieval (search_books, get_book_info, get_epub_path, list_series)
• [x] Custom columns and metadata (get_custom_columns, set_custom_column, set_metadata)

License

MIT