Best for
- Research and analysis agents that need citable page evidence.
- PDF workflows requiring tables, layout, and visual evidence.
- Teams seeking local-first document processing with trust reports.
P
PDF Reader MCP
Community
An evidence-first PDF intelligence layer for AI agents.
GitHub source repository ↗
61FMRS · C
The source presents this project as an evidence-first PDF reader focused on document structure, tables, OCR, visual evidence, citations, and trust reporting. It also states that the pure-Rust implementation remains in progress and that the README and manifest contain different version references.
PDF Reader MCP is a local-first PDF MCP server that provides an Agent Document Twin with Markdown, structured elements, tables, document maps, citation chunks, page and bounding-box evidence, visual crops, OCR provenance, trust reports, and accessibility reports.
Tools
read_pdf
Reads a PDF, automatically selects an extraction route, and returns Markdown, text, tables, chunks, a document map, and related reports.
search_pdf
Searches selectable text and optional OCR text, returning snippets, offsets, pages, bounding boxes, and provenance.
pdf_evidence
Performs inspection, page rendering, region extraction, page OCR, and region analysis for focused PDF verification.
Setup
Add the following configuration to Claude Desktop's claude_desktop_config.json, using npx to launch @sylphx/[email protected]. The server runs over stdio. Other MCP clients can use the same npx command. The README also provides a 3.2.2 stable-release example; the current server manifest lists version 4.1.2.
claude_desktop_config.json
{"mcpServers":{"pdf-reader":{"command":"npx","args":["@sylphx/[email protected]"]}}}
Fit and risk
Not for
- Workflows that only need a simple plain-text dump.
- Assuming complete pure-Rust Document Twin capabilities; the README states that pure Rust is still a work in progress.
- Unspecified remote authentication, write, or collaboration features.
Required permissions
- The server needs access to read the local PDF paths supplied in requests.
- URL loading, if used, must comply with configured host, private-IP, size, and HTTP policies.
- OCR and visual-enrichment providers are configured by the deployment environment; requests cannot select arbitrary executables or arbitrary provider URLs.
Risks and side effects
- PDFs may contain hostile, misleading, or prompt-injection-like content.
- Hidden text, nearly invisible text, overlapping text, unsafe links, and redaction signals may affect extraction or trust assessment.
- OCR, table extraction, and visual analysis can produce low-confidence results and should be checked against rendered pages or crops.
- The README and server manifest identify different product versions, so the intended version should be confirmed before installation.
Troubleshooting
- Confirm that the client supports stdio MCP.
- Verify the package name is @sylphx/pdf-reader-mcp and check the requested version.
- Use an absolute PDF path and confirm the client process can read it.
- If a scanned document is empty, check the OCR provider and MCP_PDF_OCR_* environment configuration.
- When evidence is insufficient, call search_pdf first, then use pdf_evidence with render_page or extract_regions to verify the source region.
Use cases
Read and summarize digital PDFs.
Search for a term and verify the source using page and bounding-box evidence.
Extract tables, citation chunks, and structured document content.
Process scanned PDFs with OCR and word-box provenance.
Inspect hidden text, suspicious content, and unsafe links.
Supported clients
Claude DesktopFull support
Claude CodePartial support
CursorPartial support
VS CodePartial support
Any MCP clientPartial support