mcp-pdf-utils

MCP server for PDF manipulation. Merge, split, rotate, watermark, extract text, and more.

Works with Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, ChatGPT, and any MCP-compatible client.

Why

PDF manipulation is one of the most common developer tasks, yet there's no good MCP server for it. The existing options have 1 star. This one actually works.

Everything runs locally. No API keys. No cloud services. Your PDFs never leave your machine.

Tools

Quick Start

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

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

That's it. Restart Claude Desktop and start asking it to work with PDFs.

Claude Code

claude mcp add pdf-tools -- npx -y mcp-pdf-utils

Cursor

Add to your Cursor MCP settings:

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

VS Code

Add to your VS Code MCP config:

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

Usage Examples

Once connected, just talk to your AI naturally:

• "Merge invoice_jan.pdf and invoice_feb.pdf into combined.pdf"
• "Extract pages 3-7 from report.pdf"
• "Add a CONFIDENTIAL watermark to contract.pdf"
• "How many pages does presentation.pdf have?"
• "Rotate all pages in scan.pdf by 90 degrees"
• "Remove page 5 from my document"
• "Extract all the text from this PDF"
• "Reorder the pages: put page 3 first, then 1, then 2"

Development

git clone https://github.com/zekovdev/mcp-pdf-utils.git
cd mcp-pdf-utils
npm install
npm run dev

Test with MCP Inspector

npm run inspect

This opens the official MCP Inspector where you can test every tool visually.

How It Works

The server uses pdf-lib for PDF manipulation and pdf-parse for text extraction. Both run locally with zero external dependencies — no API keys, no network calls, no cloud services.

Communication uses the MCP stdio transport, meaning the server runs as a local process that your AI client spawns and talks to via stdin/stdout.

Roadmap

• PDF compression (reduce file size)
• Image extraction from PDFs
• PDF to images (page thumbnails)
• Add page numbers
• PDF encryption / password protection
• Fill PDF form fields
• OCR for scanned PDFs (via Tesseract)
• Image to PDF conversion

Contributing

PRs welcome. Run npm run inspect to test your changes before submitting.

License

MIT