ToolDash MCP

Offline PDF and text tools for AI agents. An MCP server that lets Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code and any other MCP client merge PDFs, pull out pages, inspect documents and clean up text — entirely on your own machine.

No upload. No API key. No account. No network call of any kind: the PDF work is done locally by pdf-lib, so a confidential contract never leaves your laptop.

Tools

The two tools that write files refuse to replace an existing file unless you pass overwrite: true, so an agent retrying a call cannot quietly destroy a document.

Related MCP server: Agent Helper

Requirements

Node.js 20 or newer.

Install

No install step — your MCP client runs it on demand with npx. Add the server to your client's config and restart it.

Claude Desktop

Edit claude_desktop_config.json:

• macOS — ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

• Windows — %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

• Linux — ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tooldash": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tooldash-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The tools appear under the tools icon in the chat box.

Cursor

Create .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for every project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tooldash": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tooldash-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then enable the server under Settings → MCP.

VS Code (GitHub Copilot agent mode)

Create .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "tooldash": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tooldash-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Running from a clone

git clone https://github.com/LassiB999/tooldash-mcp.git
cd tooldash-mcp
npm install
npm test

Then point your client at node /absolute/path/to/tooldash-mcp/server.js instead of npx.

Paths may be absolute, relative to the client's working directory, or start with ~. Surrounding quotes are stripped, so a path pasted as "/home/you/file.pdf" still works.

Restricting file access

The server reads and writes wherever your user account can. To confine it to one directory, set TOOLDASH_MCP_ROOT — any path outside it is refused with a clear error:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tooldash": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "tooldash-mcp"],
      "env": { "TOOLDASH_MCP_ROOT": "/home/you/Documents/pdfs" }
    }
  }
}

Usage examples

Ask your assistant in plain language — "merge these two PDFs and put the result on my desktop" — and it will fill in the calls below. The raw JSON is here for testing.

pdf_info

{ "path": "/home/you/Documents/report.pdf" }

report.pdf: 12 page(s), 248.3 KB. Title: "Q3 Report".

merge_pdfs

{
  "inputPaths": ["/home/you/Documents/cover.pdf", "/home/you/Documents/report.pdf"],
  "outputPath": "/home/you/Documents/final.pdf",
  "overwrite": false
}

extract_pdf_pages

Pages are 1-based. Order is preserved, so "3,1-2" gives you page 3 first. A descending range like "5-1" reverses those pages.

{
  "inputPath": "/home/you/Documents/report.pdf",
  "pages": "1-3,7,10-12",
  "outputPath": "/home/you/Documents/excerpt.pdf"
}

clean_text

{
  "text": "Hello   world  \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSecond   line   ",
  "collapseBlankLines": true,
  "normalizeQuotes": false,
  "removeUrls": false
}

removeUrls strips every http/https URL. The server is offline, so it cannot tell a working link from a dead one — it does not pretend to.

How it handles failure

Bad input comes back as a readable error result the model can act on, never as a crash: a missing file, a password-protected PDF, a page number past the end of the document, or an output path that already exists each produce a message saying what to do next. The server keeps running.

Diagnostics go to stderr only. stdout carries protocol frames and nothing else — the tests would fail if anything leaked into it.

Development

npm test                # 15 end-to-end tests: a real MCP client over stdio, on real PDFs
npm run inspect         # open the MCP Inspector against this server

Powered by ToolDash

ToolDash is a set of free, browser-based utilities — PDF, text, image, colour, developer and calculator tools — that run entirely in your tab with nothing uploaded. This server brings the same idea to your editor.

• tooldash.app — the full tool collection

• PDF Factory — the browser PDF studio these PDF tools mirror

• Al-Katib — Arabic keyboard and writing pad

License

MIT