pdf-extract-mcp

FastMCP server for PDF text extraction and metadata — part of the Palimpsest intelligence toolkit.

Why

LLMs can't read PDFs natively. This server fills the gap — extract text from PDF documents, pull document metadata (title, author, producer, creation date), and extract specific page ranges. All results are returned as structured JSON for easy downstream processing.

Architecture

Pluggable PDF backends with graceful degradation:

• base install (pip install pdf-extract-mcp) — pypdf-based text extraction and metadata (~5 MB)

The server tries backends in priority order: pypdf → none.

Tools

Tool	Description
extract_text(path, pages="")	Extract text from a PDF — all pages or a specific range (e.g. '1-5')
extract_metadata(path)	Full metadata: file info, SHA-256, PDF metadata, encryption status
extract_pages(path, page_range)	Convenience wrapper for extracting specific page ranges

Installation

git clone https://github.com/palimpsest-labs/pdf-extract-mcp
cd pdf-extract-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

pip install -e .

Usage

from pdf_extract_mcp.server import extract_text, extract_metadata, extract_pages

# Get everything at once
result = extract_text("~/documents/report.pdf")

# Or separate calls
meta = extract_metadata("~/documents/report.pdf")
pages = extract_pages("~/documents/report.pdf", "1-3,5")

Security

Paths must be absolute and resolve to a location under the user's home directory. Path traversal (..) and paths starting with / are rejected. Symlinks are resolved before checking home-directory containment.

License

MIT