Pdf Toolkit MCP

What AryanBV/pdf-toolkit-mcp MCP server does

AryanBV/pdf-toolkit-mcp MCP server provides 22 tools for working with PDF files through an MCP client. Its capabilities cover four broad workflows: inspecting existing documents, changing their structure or content, generating new PDFs, and rendering pages for visual review.

For document inspection, the server can extract text, return metadata, list AcroForm fields, search for literal text matches, convert text-based PDFs to reading-order Markdown, and compare two PDFs page by page. The Markdown conversion can infer headings and detect lists, but it does not reconstruct tables as Markdown tables.

Creation tools support plain text, CommonMark and GFM Markdown, and three named templates: invoice, report, and letter. Other tools fill form fields, add watermarks or images, insert QR codes and barcodes, and add page numbers. Existing files can be merged, split, reordered, rotated, or have pages deleted. Form values can be flattened into static page content, and PDFs can be protected with AES-256 password encryption.

How it works

The AryanBV/pdf-toolkit-mcp MCP server runs as a local stdio process. An MCP client starts the package with npx, then selects tools and supplies their arguments. Operations generally use input and output file paths, while read-oriented tools return extracted information in the MCP response. Rendering can either write PNG or JPEG files and return their paths, or return inline image blocks for a vision-capable client.

Most text extraction tools return the first 10 pages by default to limit response size. Page ranges or page lists can be supplied where supported. PDF transformations preserve AcroForm fields for merge, split, reorder, and delete operations; duplicate field names from merged inputs are automatically namespaced. Flattening removes field interactivity after baking current values into the page content.

Setup and configuration

Install requirements are limited to Node.js 20 or newer and an MCP client that supports local server processes. No API key, configuration file, Docker container, compiler, or native dependency is required. The server is described as working on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Run it directly with:

npx -y @aryanbv/pdf-toolkit-mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf can connect by adding a server entry that uses npx with -y and @aryanbv/pdf-toolkit-mcp as the package argument. Claude Code and VS Code Agent mode are also documented in the source material, but their configuration formats differ from the other clients.

Tools and capabilities

The AryanBV/pdf-toolkit-mcp MCP server includes these practical operations:

• Extract text, metadata, form fields, reading-order Markdown, search matches, and page-by-page text differences.
• Create PDFs from text, Markdown, or invoice, report, and letter templates.
• Fill text, checkbox, dropdown, radio, and multi-select list-box fields.
• Merge, split, reorder, rotate, delete, flatten, and number pages.
• Add watermarks, PNG or JPEG images, QR codes, and supported barcodes.
• Render pages to PNG or JPEG for scanned or image-only documents.
• Encrypt PDFs with AES-256 using user and owner passwords.

Plain-text creation and form filling accept a font path for non-Latin text such as Arabic or CJK. QR and barcode insertion supports QR code, Code 128, Data Matrix, EAN-13, PDF417, and Aztec formats.

Limitations and notes

PDF-to-Markdown works best with clean, digital, text-based documents. Scanned or image-only PDFs need pdf_render_pages, and complex layouts may not convert accurately. The converter handles up to two content columns plus full-width title or footer bands; documents with three or more columns fall back to single-column reading order.

PDF comparison uses absolute page indexes and content-stream text order rather than visual reading order. Reflowed or multi-column documents can therefore produce noisy differences, and inserting or deleting a page shifts subsequent comparisons. Large responses may be truncated. Off-page placements are rejected rather than silently clipped, and deleting every page is not allowed.