PDF MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for processing large PDF files with intelligent chunking and text extraction.

Features

• PDF Metadata: Get file info, page count, author, title, etc.

• Text Extraction: Extract text from specific page ranges with character limits

• PDF Search: Search within PDFs with contextual results

• Smart Chunking: Calculate optimal page ranges for processing large PDFs

Tools

1. pdf_get_metadata

Get metadata about a PDF file.

Parameters:

• pdf_path (string, required): Full path to the PDF file

Returns:

• File size, page count, title, author, and other metadata

2. pdf_extract_text

Extract text from a range of pages.

Parameters:

• pdf_path (string, required): Full path to the PDF file

• start_page (integer, optional): Starting page (1-indexed, default: 1)

• end_page (integer, optional): Ending page (default: last page)

• max_chars (integer, optional): Maximum characters to extract

Returns:

• Extracted text with page markers

• Character count and truncation info

3. pdf_search

Search for text within a PDF.

Parameters:

• pdf_path (string, required): Full path to the PDF file

• query (string, required): Text to search for (case-insensitive)

• context_chars (integer, optional): Context characters around matches (default: 200)

• max_results (integer, optional): Maximum results (default: 50)

Returns:

• List of matches with page numbers and context

4. pdf_get_chunks

Calculate optimal chunking strategy for large PDFs.

Parameters:

• pdf_path (string, required): Full path to the PDF file

• max_chars_per_chunk (integer, optional): Target chunk size (default: 50000)

• overlap_pages (integer, optional): Page overlap between chunks (default: 1)

Returns:

• List of chunks with page ranges and estimated character counts

Installation

1. Install dependencies:

2. Configure in Claude Code (see Configuration section)

Configuration

Add to your Claude Code MCP settings (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows):

After configuration, restart Claude Code to load the MCP server.

Usage Examples

Processing a 55MB PDF

1. First, get metadata:

2. Calculate chunks:

3. Extract text by chunk:

4. Search across the PDF:

Technical Details

• Uses pdfplumber for high-quality text extraction

• Uses pypdf for metadata and PDF structure

• Runs locally using your compute resources

• No file size limits (processes in chunks)

• Handles encrypted PDFs (if not password-protected)

Troubleshooting

Server not appearing in Claude Code:

• Check that the path in config is correct

• Restart Claude Code after configuration changes

• Check Python is accessible from command line

Extraction issues:

• Scanned PDFs may have poor text extraction (OCR not yet implemented)

• Some PDFs may have unusual encoding