docmcp

Live: https://docmcp.fly.dev — free key at POST /keys/free, 10 docs/month. Paid: $10/mo for 100, $30/mo for 500. Quotas live in PLANS in src/store.ts.

A paid MCP server that turns structured data into real .docx and .xlsx files. Agents are good at prose and bad at file formats — they emit Markdown and hope. This gives them a tool that returns a Word or Excel file with actual headings, tables, bold headers, frozen panes and RTL support.

Returns a short-lived download URL rather than a base64 blob: a 200KB docx inlined into a tool result costs the caller ~70k tokens.

Two modes, one codebase:

• --stdio — local client (Claude Desktop / Code). No auth, no quota, no expiry; files are written to OUT_DIR and the tool returns the path.

• default — hosted HTTP at /mcp. API key required, quota metered, files served as URLs that expire after 24h. This is the product.

Local

npm install

Already registered in Claude Desktop as docmcp (output → ~/Documents/docmcp). To register elsewhere:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docmcp": {
      "command": "/usr/local/bin/node",
      "args": ["<repo>/node_modules/tsx/dist/cli.mjs", "<repo>/src/index.ts", "--stdio"],
      "env": { "DB_PATH": "<repo>/docmcp.db", "OUT_DIR": "<somewhere>" }
    }
  }
}

Absolute paths matter — the client launches with a minimal PATH.

Related MCP server: docx-forge-mcp

Hosted

npm start          # http://localhost:8787/mcp
curl -X POST localhost:8787/keys/free

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docmcp": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://your-host/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer dk_..." }
    }
  }
}

Tools

Env

Plans and quotas live in PLANS in src/store.ts.

Deploy

Any Docker host. A volume must be mounted at /data — the SQLite key database and generated files live there, and a container filesystem is wiped on every redeploy. Losing it means every paying customer's key stops working.

fly launch --no-deploy && fly volumes create data --size 1
fly secrets set BASE_URL=https://your-app.fly.dev STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_live_...
fly deploy

BASE_URL must be the public URL — it is baked into every download link handed to a client. Getting it wrong produces links to localhost.

Billing flow

/buy/starter → Stripe Checkout → webhook checkout.session.completed → key issued → customer lands on /success and sees the key there. No email provider needed. customer.subscription.deleted deactivates it. There are no user accounts: the key is the account.

Test

npm test

Covers both generators (including a ragged table row and a / in a sheet name — both things an LLM will send eventually), number preservation through an xlsx round-trip, and that quota stops exactly at the plan limit.

Known gaps

• No PDF. Good PDF output needs headless Chrome or LibreOffice, which triples the deploy. Word and Excel are the actual gap — everyone already ships Markdown→PDF. Add it when a paying user asks.

• A lost key cannot be recovered. It is shown once on /success. Add email delivery or a "resend by email" route when the first customer asks.

• Files and DB are on local disk. Fine for one box with a volume; move to S3 and Postgres when you run two.

• Free keys are rate limited, not abuse-proof. One per IP per 24h plus a global daily ceiling (FREE_KEYS_PER_DAY, default 200). Rotating VPNs still defeats it — nothing stops that, and no free tier anywhere survives a determined attacker. The limits exist to bound the worst case, not to eliminate it.

• /admin needs ADMIN_TOKEN. Unset, the route 404s, so an unconfigured deploy never exposes it. Visit /admin?token=….