@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp
OfficialClick on "Deploy Server".
Wait a few minutes for the server to deploy. Once ready, it will show a "Started" state.
In the chat, type
@followed by the MCP server name and your instructions, e.g., "@@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp Extract the invoice numbers and totals from the PDFs in ~/invoices and summarize them."
That's it! The server will respond to your query, and you can continue using it as needed.
Here is a step-by-step guide with screenshots.
@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp
MCP server for the Vision API. Point Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor or any other MCP host at a folder of scans and ask for the invoices — no integration to write, no API key in generated code, no contract paraphrased from memory.
You: pull the totals out of every invoice in ~/inbox and put them in a CSV
Claude: [vision_analyze × 7]
Done — 7 invoices, 14 credits. Three had no PO number; I left those cells empty.Install
Nothing to install. Add it to your host's config and it runs via npx.
Claude Code — claude mcp add visionapi --env VISION_API_KEY=sk_live_... -- npx -y @devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp ~/inbox
Claude Desktop — claude_desktop_config.json:
{
"mcpServers": {
"visionapi": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp", "/Users/me/inbox"],
"env": { "VISION_API_KEY": "sk_live_..." }
}
}
}Cursor — .cursor/mcp.json, same shape:
{
"mcpServers": {
"visionapi": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp", "."],
"env": { "VISION_API_KEY": "sk_live_..." }
}
}
}VS Code — .vscode/mcp.json:
{
"servers": {
"visionapi": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@devrobotlabs/visionapi-mcp", "${workspaceFolder}"],
"env": { "VISION_API_KEY": "sk_live_..." }
}
}
}Get a key at app.visionapi.io/dashboard/keys. New accounts get 50 credits, no card.
The host config blocks live in this README rather than in an
examples/directory — a departure from the nine client libraries, and a deliberate one. A snippet that exists only in a README cannot drift from a runnable script nobody runs.
Related MCP server: receiptconverter-mcp
Which directories it can read
Every positional argument is a directory the server may read files from. With none given, the process working directory is the only root — which is the safe default, because MCP hosts launch a stdio server with the project directory as its cwd.
This matters more than it may look. The server holds a live spending credential and runs
with your filesystem permissions, so it can read anything your shell can. Asking it for the raw
text of ~/Documents/passport.jpg is a working way to get that document's contents into a
model's context and into whatever transcript your host keeps. The allowlist is what stops a
confused or manipulated agent doing that by accident.
Paths are resolved with realpath on both sides before being compared, so a symlink inside
an allowed directory cannot point out of it.
--allow-any-path turns the allowlist off entirely. It warns on stderr at startup and you
should have a reason.
Tools
Tool | What it does | Cost |
| Structured fields out of one image or PDF | 1 credit an image, 2 a PDF page |
| Up to 5 plain-language questions about one file | 1 credit an image, 1 a PDF page |
| What is this file? Ranked presets, no extraction | 1 credit per 5 calls |
| The preset catalogue | free |
| Every field one preset returns | free |
| Balance and buckets | free |
| Status/result of a queued task | free |
The three that spend credits are annotated readOnlyHint: false, so a host that auto-approves
read-only tools will still stop and ask before one of them runs.
The catalogue is also exposed as resources — visionapi://presets and
visionapi://presets/{name} — for hosts that prefer them. Tools are the primary surface,
because resource support is uneven across hosts.
Output
Responses are rendered for a model to read, not dumped as JSON. A 37-field invoice preset over
a document that fills twelve of them comes back as a table plus one Not found in this document (25): … line, rather than as twenty-five repetitions of
{"value":null,"confidence":"low"} — three to four times smaller, and easier to act on.
Nothing is lost in the process. Every tool takes a format:
markdown(default) — the rendering above.compact_json— the same information as data, with_not_foundand_low_confidencearrays. For when the agent will parse rather than read.json— the API response verbatim. What to reach for when writing real HTTP code against the contract.
Confidence is printed only when it is not high, so (mid) and (low) stand out and the
common case costs nothing to read.
Long documents
Leave mode at auto. The API kills a synchronous request at 60 seconds; the server then
re-submits it to the queue and polls, reporting progress to your host as it goes. You are
charged once, because the timed-out attempt released its reservation in full.
Pass mode: "async" up front for anything over roughly ten pages, and pages: "1-5" to sample
a long document cheaply — you are charged for selected pages only.
Costs and failures
Failures cost nothing. Every non-2xx releases the credit reservation in full, so a failed call is safe to correct and repeat and there is no cleanup to do. The tool descriptions say so, which is why an agent using this server behaves sensibly after an error instead of either giving up or retrying something that cannot work.
Two errors carry advice that is worth knowing yourself:
Error | What it means |
| Retrying cannot help — the balance does not change on its own. Top up. |
| Your own async tasks are at the plan's cap. It clears when one of them finishes, not on a timer — so sleeping and retrying blocks the very thing you are waiting for. |
Environment
Variable | Required | Purpose |
| for billable tools | Your key. The catalogue tools work without it. |
| no | Override the API base URL. Rarely needed. |
A missing key does not stop the server starting: it warns on stderr, tools/list still works,
and the first billable call returns a message naming the fix. A server that refuses to start
tells the user only that something is broken.
Development
npm install
npm run typecheck
npm test # 37 offline tests — no key, no network
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node ./dist/cli.js ~/some/dirnpm install --no-save ../node to test against a local build of the client. Not
npm install ../node — that rewrites package.json to "file:../node", and that manifest is
what gets published.
Links
MIT licensed.
Available Tools
7 toolsvision_analyzeExtract structured data from an image or PDFA
Extract structured data from ONE image or PDF (JPEG, PNG, WebP, TIFF, PDF — detected by magic bytes, the extension is ignored).
Cost: 1 credit per image, 2 per selected PDF page. Failures cost NOTHING — every non-2xx releases the reservation in full, so a failed call is safe to fix and repeat, and there is no cleanup to do.
Choose ONE way to say what you want:
preset — a catalogue name, or "auto" to have the API classify the file first, for free. "auto" is the right default when you do not already know the document type. Do not call vision_list_presets just to guess a preset; the classifier is better at it and free.
schema — your own fields, {"field_name": "what to extract"}. The description IS the prompt: "the invoice number exactly as printed, without the #" extracts better than "invoice number". A schema can be passed alongside a preset to add fields to it.
schema_name — a schema saved in the account's dashboard. Not combinable with the others.
Reading what comes back:
Fields the document did not carry are NOT printed as values — they are listed at the end under "Not found". A preset always defines every one of its fields, so an absent value means "this document does not have it", never "the call failed".
A "(mid)" or "(low)" after a value is its confidence; no marker means high. Decide deliberately what to do with a low-confidence number rather than treating it as fact.
Never hardcode a preset's field names from memory. Call vision_get_preset first if the names are going into code.
Long documents: leave mode at "auto". The server kills a synchronous request at 60 seconds; this tool then re-submits it to the queue and polls, and you are charged exactly once because the timed-out attempt refunded itself. Pass mode:"async" up front for anything over ~10 pages.
One file per call. To process a folder, call this once per file — and if you get too_many_tasks, wait for your own in-flight tasks rather than sleeping.
Inputs: mode, pages, detail, format, +10 more.
vision_askAsk questions about an image or PDFA
Ask up to 5 plain-language questions about ONE image or PDF and get answers with a verdict.
Cost: 1 credit per image, and 1 per selected PDF page — half what extraction costs on a PDF, because the answer does not scale with the page. The questions themselves are free: asking five costs exactly what asking one costs. Failures cost NOTHING.
Reach for this over vision_analyze when the answer is a judgement rather than a field — "is this signed?", "does the delivery address match the billing address?", "is anyone wearing safety equipment?". Reach for vision_analyze when you want values you will store or compute with; asking for a total and then parsing the prose is slower, dearer and less reliable than extracting it.
Reading what comes back: branch on verdict, never on the prose.
"yes" / "no" — the images settle it.
"uncertain" — a yes/no question the images genuinely do not settle. Treat it as missing information, not as a "no".
"n-a" — the question was not a yes/no question; the answer is in the prose. Each verdict carries a confidence, shown as "(mid)" or "(low)"; no marker means high.
Answers are at document level, not per page. Long documents behave exactly as in vision_analyze — leave mode at "auto", or pass "async" up front past ~10 pages.
Inputs: questions (required), mode, pages, detail, +5 more.
vision_creditsVision API credit balanceARead-only
The account's credit balance and its per-bucket breakdown.
Free — no credits consumed.
Worth checking before a large batch, so you can tell the user up front that 300 files will not fit in the balance rather than stopping half way through with an insufficient_credits error. Buckets are spent in order: subscription, then rollover, then pack, then welcome.
Inputs: no named parameters. Returns: balance, buckets
vision_detectIdentify what a file is, without extracting itA
Identify what a file IS without paying to extract it: the presets that could handle it, ranked, each with a confidence and a one-line reason.
Cost: 1 credit per 5 calls, whatever the file — detection only ever reads page 1, so a 300-page PDF costs the same as a photo. Four calls in five report 0 credits used.
recommended is exactly what preset:"auto" would run on this file, so you can probe first and
trust the answer.
Reach for this when the TYPE is the decision: routing a mixed inbox to different handlers, or refusing to spend two credits a page on a 40-page PDF sight unseen. Do NOT reach for it as a step before every vision_analyze call — if you want the data and do not care which preset produced it, preset:"auto" classifies the same way, for free, in the same request. Using detect first and then analyze is two calls where one would do.
If fallback is true, nothing matched confidently and the recommendation is the generic
preset. That is an honest "unknown", and it is worth surfacing to the user rather than
extracting against a shape nobody has confirmed.
Inputs: detail, format, file_url, file_path.
vision_get_presetGet a Vision API presetARead-onlyIdempotent
The full field list for one preset: every field name, its type, its description, and whether it is always present.
Free — no credits, no API key needed.
This is the ONLY correct source for a preset's field names. Never write one from memory: the catalogue is versioned and a name you remember from another project may not exist here, and a schema built on a guessed name fails at the point where you are parsing the response rather than at the point where you made it up.
Fields marked ★ are present on every response; the rest appear only when the document carries them. A field holding null means the document did not have it, never that the call failed.
Inputs: name (required), format.
vision_get_taskGet a queued Vision API taskARead-only
Status, and once finished the result, of a queued task.
Free — no credits consumed. The result was already paid for when the task was submitted.
Call this with the id from a call that was queued — either one you made with mode:"async", or one where polling ran out of time and the answer told you to come back. A task that is still "queued" or "processing" has NOT failed; it is working, and re-submitting the file would be a second charge for the same work.
Results are kept for 7 days. After that only the metadata survives and the file has to be sent again.
Inputs: task_id (required), format, max_chars.
vision_list_presetsList Vision API presetsARead-onlyIdempotent
List the preset catalogue: every named schema, with its field count and what it is for.
Free — no credits, no API key needed.
Read this when the user asks what document types are supported, or when you need a preset name to put in code. Do NOT call it to pick a preset before an extraction: preset:"auto" classifies the file server-side for free and is better at it than matching a description by eye, and vision_detect costs a fifth of a credit if you want the ranking. Listing 28 presets to guess one is the expensive path to a worse answer.
The names here are catalogue entries, not field names. Call vision_get_preset before writing any field name into code.
Inputs: format.
Tool Schema Changelog
Recent tool additions, removals, and schema changes observed during successful MCP inspections.
Loading tool schema changelog…
TDQS
Scored across 7 tools
Each tool serves a distinct purpose: catalog discovery, preset details, credit balance, extraction, Q&A, detection, and async task retrieval. Even the overlapping detect/analyze pair is explicitly disambiguated with guidance on when each is appropriate, eliminating selection ambiguity.
All tools follow the vision_<action> pattern, with actions being clear verbs (list, get, analyze, ask, detect, get). The lone exception 'credits' represents a state query but still fits the pattern as a noun-based action. The prefix is consistent and each name clearly signals its function.
Seven tools is well-scoped for a vision API server, covering catalog management, extraction, Q&A, detection, credits, and async task handling. Each tool earns its place with no redundancy or bloat, matching the typical range for a focused service.
The tool set provides full lifecycle coverage: discover presets (list/get), perform operations (analyze/ask/detect), handle async tasks (get_task), and monitor usage (credits). There are no obvious gaps, and any missing features like custom schema management are handled via the dashboard rather than needing tools.
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