pdf-mcp

PDF tools for Claude — an MCP server, CLI, and Claude Code skill for reading and writing PDF files.

Stack: Mozilla PDF.js (pdfjs-dist) for text extraction · pdf-lib for creating and manipulating PDFs · @modelcontextprotocol/sdk for the MCP server.

No build step — plain JavaScript ESM, runs directly with Node.js 18+.

MCP Server

Setup

Clone the repo and link it globally so pdf-mcp is on your PATH:

git clone https://github.com/angshuman/pdf-mcp.git
cd pdf-mcp
npm install
npm link          # registers the pdf-mcp command globally

Claude Code:

claude mcp add pdf-mcp -- pdf-mcp

Claude Desktop — add to %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows) or ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-mcp": {
      "command": "pdf-mcp"
    }
  }
}

If you'd rather not use npm link, point directly at the script:

claude mcp add pdf-mcp -- node /path/to/pdf-mcp/src/server.js

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/pdf-mcp/src/server.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Description
`pdf_read`	Extract text from a PDF. Optional `page` param for a single page (1-based).
`pdf_info`	Get metadata: page count, title, author, file size, dates.
`pdf_write`	Create a new PDF from plain text. Supports `title`, `author`, `font_size`.
`pdf_merge`	Merge an ordered list of PDFs into one file.
`pdf_extract_pages`	Pull specific pages (1-based array) into a new PDF.
`pdf_split`	Split a PDF into one file per page in an output directory.
`pdf_page_to_image`	Render a single page to a PNG or JPEG image.
`pdf_to_images`	Render every page to image files in a directory.

CLI

Install

npm install
npm link          # makes pdf-tool available globally

Usage

# Extract text
pdf-tool read report.pdf
pdf-tool read report.pdf --page 3
pdf-tool read report.pdf --out extracted.txt

# Show metadata
pdf-tool info report.pdf

# Create a PDF from a text file or stdin
pdf-tool write out.pdf --in content.txt --title "My Doc" --author "Jane"
cat content.txt | pdf-tool write out.pdf

# Merge PDFs
pdf-tool merge combined.pdf a.pdf b.pdf c.pdf

# Extract specific pages (1-based, comma-separated)
pdf-tool extract input.pdf output.pdf 1,3,5

# Split into individual page files
pdf-tool split input.pdf ./pages/

# Render a single page to an image (PNG or JPEG)
pdf-tool image input.pdf page1.png --page 1
pdf-tool image input.pdf page1.jpg --page 1 --scale 3

# Render all pages to images in a directory
pdf-tool images input.pdf ./images/
pdf-tool images input.pdf ./images/ --format jpeg --scale 1.5

Scale controls DPI: 1.0 = 72 DPI · 2.0 = 144 DPI (default) · 3.0 = 216 DPI

Claude Code Skill

The /pdf slash command is in .claude/commands/pdf.md and is available automatically within this project.

/pdf read ./report.pdf
/pdf write ./out.pdf summarize the meeting notes
/pdf merge ./combined.pdf a.pdf b.pdf
/pdf extract ./in.pdf ./out.pdf 1,3,5
/pdf split ./in.pdf ./pages/

Tests

Uses the Node.js built-in test runner — no extra dependencies.

npm test

40 tests across 8 suites covering all operations: write, read, info, merge, extract pages, split, page-to-image, and pdf-to-images.

Notes

pdfjs-dist emits stderr warnings about LiberationSans.ttf and glyph paths when rendering PDFs that use non-embedded standard Type1 fonts (Helvetica, Times, etc.). These are cosmetic — text extraction is unaffected, and image rendering works correctly for PDFs with embedded fonts (the common case for PDFs from Word, Adobe, Google Docs, etc.).
All file paths passed to the MCP tools and CLI can be absolute or relative to the current working directory.
Page numbers are always 1-based in both the MCP tools and CLI.

pdf-mcp

pdf-mcp

MCP Server

Setup

Tools

CLI

Install

Usage

Claude Code Skill

Tests

Notes

Reviews