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mcp-pdf-tools

MCP server for extracting text, searching, and analyzing PDF files

Give Claude (or any MCP client) the ability to read, search, and analyze PDF documents.

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What is this?

mcp-pdf-tools is a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI assistants the ability to work with PDF files. Point it at any text-based PDF and your assistant can extract content, search for specific text, pull metadata, and analyze word usage — all without leaving the conversation.

Quick Start

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-tools": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "mcp-pdf-tools"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add pdf-tools npx mcp-pdf-tools

Other MCP Clients

npx -y mcp-pdf-tools

The server communicates over stdio using the MCP protocol.

Tools

pdf_info

Get metadata and statistics about a PDF file.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
file_path	string	Yes	Absolute path to the PDF file

Returns: Title, author, page count, text length, creator, and producer information.

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pdf_extract_text

Extract all text content from a PDF file.

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
file_path	string	Yes	—	Absolute path to the PDF file
max_chars	number	No	50000	Maximum characters to return (truncates with notice)

Returns: Full text content of the PDF, prefixed with page count.

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pdf_extract_pages

Extract text from a specific page range.

Parameter	Type	Required	Description
file_path	string	Yes	Absolute path to the PDF file
start_page	number	Yes	Start page (1-indexed)
end_page	number	Yes	End page (inclusive)

Returns: Text content from the specified page range.

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pdf_search

Search for text within a PDF file, returning matches with surrounding context.

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
file_path	string	Yes	—	Absolute path to the PDF file
query	string	Yes	—	Text to search for (case-insensitive)
max_results	number	No	20	Maximum number of matches to return

Returns: List of matches with line numbers and surrounding context lines.

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pdf_word_stats

Get word count and top word frequencies from a PDF.

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
file_path	string	Yes	—	Absolute path to the PDF file
top_n	number	No	20	Number of top words to include

Returns: Total word count, page count, and a ranked list of the most frequent words (3+ characters).

Example Conversations

Summarizing a report

You: Summarize the key points in /documents/quarterly-report.pdf

Claude: (uses pdf_info to check document size, then pdf_extract_text to read content)

This is a 24-page quarterly report covering Q4 2025. The key points are...

Searching a contract

You: Does the NDA in /legal/nda-acme.pdf mention anything about a non-compete?

Claude: (uses pdf_search with query "non-compete")

Yes — I found 3 mentions of "non-compete" in the document. On line 47, there's a clause stating...

Analyzing word usage

You: What are the most discussed topics in /research/paper.pdf?

Claude: (uses pdf_word_stats to get word frequencies)

The paper is 8,400 words across 12 pages. The most frequent terms are "neural" (47 occurrences), "training" (38), and "optimization" (29), suggesting the paper focuses heavily on...

Limitations

Be aware of these current constraints:

• Text-based PDFs only — Scanned or image-based PDFs will return empty text. No OCR support (yet).
• Page extraction is approximate — Page boundaries are detected heuristically. Extracted page ranges may not align perfectly with the visual pages in your PDF viewer.
• No table extraction — Tabular data in PDFs may not preserve its structure in the extracted text.
• Full file loaded into memory — Very large PDFs may be slow to process.
• No merge or split — This tool reads PDFs; it does not modify, merge, or split them.

Development

git clone https://github.com/seraphinederenouard/mcp-pdf-tools.git
cd mcp-pdf-tools
npm install
npm run build
npm test

License

MIT