Pdf MCP Server

🚀 PDF Tools MCP Server

This is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for operating PDF files. It can be used from MCP clients such as Claude Desktop and Claude Code.

✨ Features

✨ Easily create a PDF file excluding specific pages

While other PDF tools commonly offer the function of "extracting specific pages", this tool provides the opposite function of "excluding specific pages". For example, if you want to delete only the 7th page from a 31 - page PDF, you don't need to specify all the remaining 30 pages. You can simply specify the page numbers you want to exclude.

✨ Reorder PDF pages freely

The page reordering function allows you to easily change the page order of a PDF. You can intuitively correct pages with incorrect order due to scanning errors or bring specific pages to the beginning.

💻 Functions

• merge_pdfs - Combine multiple PDF files into one.
• split_pdf - Split a PDF into single - page files.
• extract_pages - Extract specific pages from a PDF.
• extract_text - Extract text from a PDF.
• exclude_pages ⭐ - Create a new PDF excluding specific pages from an existing PDF.
• reorder_pages - Reorder the pages of a PDF in a specified order.
• get_pdf_info - Get information about a PDF (number of pages, title, author, etc.).

📦 Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/h-ucchi/pdf-mcp-server.git
cd pdf-mcp-server

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build
npm run build

🚀 Quick Start

Usage with Claude Desktop (Desktop App)

1. Open the configuration file of Claude Desktop.

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add the following configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-tools": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/pdf-mcp-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

⚠️ Important Note

Replace /absolute/path/ with the actual project path.

3. Restart Claude Desktop.

4. Request PDF operations in natural language on Claude Desktop.

Extract the 5th page from the PDF.
Combine multiple PDFs.
Create a file excluding the 7th page from the PDF.

Usage with Claude Code (CLI)

1. Register the MCP server.

claude mcp add --transport stdio pdf-tools -- node /path/to/pdf-mcp-server/build/index.js

2. Request PDF operations in natural language on Claude Code.

Extract the 5th page from the PDF.
Combine multiple PDFs.
Create a file excluding the 7th page from the PDF.
Create a file excluding pages 3, 7, and 15 from the PDF.

3. Check the MCP server.

# Check the registered MCP servers
claude mcp list

💻 Usage Examples

Excluding Pages (Characteristic Function)

Create a file excluding the 7th page from document.pdf.
→ A 30 - page PDF is created by deleting only the 7th page from the 31 - page PDF.

Exclude pages 3, 7, and 15 from presentation.pdf.
→ Multiple pages can be excluded at once.

Extracting Pages

Extract the 5th page from document.pdf.

PDF Combination

Combine all PDFs in the folder.

PDF Splitting

Split report.pdf into single - page files.

Page Reordering

Swap the 3rd and 5th pages of the PDF.
→ The page order can be freely reordered.

Bring the 5th page to the beginning.
→ The pages are reordered in the order of [5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, ...].

🔧 Technical Details

• Model Context Protocol SDK - MCP implementation
• pdf-lib - PDF operations
• pdf-parse - PDF text extraction
• TypeScript

🛠️ Development

# Build
npm run build

# Development mode (file watching)
npm run build -- --watch

🐞 Troubleshooting

"Server disconnected" error in Claude Desktop

⚠️ Important Note

Cause: Due to macOS security restrictions, Claude Desktop may not be able to access files in the Desktop folder.

Solution: Place the project in the home directory.

# Move the project to the home directory
mv ~/Desktop/pdf-mcp-server ~/pdf-mcp-server

# Update the path in the configuration file
# ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-tools": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/Users/YOUR_USERNAME/pdf-mcp-server/build/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

# Restart Claude Desktop

How to check logs

You can check the logs of Claude Desktop to get detailed error information.

# macOS
tail -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-pdf-tools.log

# Windows
type %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Claude\Logs\mcp-server-pdf-tools.log

Check if the MCP server starts

# Run directly in the terminal for testing
node /path/to/pdf-mcp-server/build/index.js
# If "PDF Tools MCP Server started" is displayed, it is working properly.

📚 Related Links

• Model Context Protocol
• Claude Code