TruePath PDF — MCP server

Let your AI process PDFs locally. Files never leave your Mac.

@truepathpdf/mcp-server is a Model Context Protocol server that lets Claude, Cursor, and any other MCP-aware client read and process PDF files on your machine — without uploading them anywhere.

Built and maintained by Joy Truepath Pte. Ltd., the team behind the TruePath PDF Mac app.

Status

v0.1 — free tier scaffold. Three tools shipping today: get_info, extract_text, search. The full free tier (split, merge, pages, to_images, extract_images, open_in_truepath) and the Pro tier (redact, fill_form, flatten, sign, compress, annotate, autocrop, batch, ocr) land in the next two weeks.

Related MCP server: Local Documents MCP Server

Privacy

• 100% local. The MCP server runs on your machine and never talks to a network.

• No telemetry, no analytics, no phone-home.

• Free tools work fully offline, forever, with no key.

• Pro tools (coming soon) are gated by an offline Ed25519 license check — still no network call at use time.

Install

# npx — no install required
npx -y @truepathpdf/mcp-server

# or install globally
npm install -g @truepathpdf/mcp-server
truepath-pdf-mcp

Requires Node.js 20 or newer.

Hook up to Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "truepath-pdf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@truepathpdf/mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The truepath-pdf tools appear in the tool tray.

Tools (v0.1)

get_info

Page count, first-page size (with an allSameSize flag), encryption status, and embedded PDF metadata (title, author, dates, producer, format version).

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

extract_text

Plain-text extraction. Optional 1-based page range ("3", "1-5", "1,3,5-7"). Output is grouped by page with ===== Page N ===== markers so you can feed it back into a prompt and the model can cite the right page.

{ "path": "/Users/you/Documents/report.pdf", "pages": "1-3" }

search

Substring search across the whole document. Returns each hit's page, offset within the page, and a configurable snippet of surrounding text. Use this for grep-style discovery before doing a heavier extract_text over the whole file.

{ "path": "/Users/you/Documents/report.pdf", "query": "revenue", "contextChars": 80 }

Roadmap (next 2 weeks)

Free tier (no key, ever)

• split — by page range or by bookmark

• merge — combine N PDFs into one

• pages — rotate, delete, reorder

• to_images — render pages to PNG/JPG at a given DPI

• extract_images — pull embedded images out

• open_in_truepath — hand a PDF off to the TruePath PDF Mac app via URL scheme (so you can finish a job in a GUI)

Pro tier (Ed25519 license key, offline verify)

• redact — text-preserving redaction via PDFium (the same engine the Mac app uses; the words are removed from the file, not just covered)

• fill_form — fill AcroForm fields, save with values preserved

• flatten — bake filled forms / annotations into the page stream

• sign — visible signature placement, signed-PDF write

• compress — recompress images / streams to shrink file size

• annotate — programmatic highlight / underline / sticky-note

• autocrop — detect content bounds and crop margins

• batch — apply any tool across a glob of files

• ocr — Apple Vision OCR (Mac only, on-device, CJK-strong)

A buy-once Pro key will be available via Lemon Squeezy at launch (target: USD 29, includes 12 months of updates). Owners of the TruePath PDF Mac app will be able to redeem their App Store receipt for a Pro MCP key via an in-app button.

License

MIT for the MCP shell. Transitive dependencies:

• @modelcontextprotocol/sdk — MIT

• pdfjs-dist — Apache 2.0

• zod — MIT

Pro tier will additionally bundle a prebuilt PDFium library (BSD/Apache, the same one used by Chrome).

Contact

• Issues: https://github.com/JoyTruepath/truepath-pdf-mcp/issues

• Mail: support@joytruepath.com

• Joy Truepath Pte. Ltd., Singapore (UEN 202205336E)