PDF Inspector MCP Server

A lightweight, zero-configuration TypeScript MCP server that inspects local PDF files using standard, widely-adopted libraries.

Features

• extract_text — Extracts raw embedded text from PDFs using pdf-parse.
• count_pages — Returns the total number of pages in a PDF.
• ocr_pdf — Renders PDF pages to images and performs OCR with tesseract.js for image-based (scanned) PDFs.

Dependencies

Package	Purpose
@modelcontextprotocol/sdk	Official MCP TypeScript SDK
pdf-parse	Zero-config text extraction and page counting
pdfjs-dist	PDF rendering engine (standard Mozilla library)
canvas	Canvas implementation for Node.js rendering
tesseract.js	Pure-JavaScript OCR (lightweight, no binary installs)
zod	Schema validation for tool parameters

All dependencies install with a standard npm install and require no external binary setup beyond what npm provides.

Quick Start

npm install
npm run build
npm start

Or run directly with tsx during development:

npm run dev

Running with an MCP Client

The server communicates over stdio, the standard MCP transport. Use it with Claude Code, VS Code, Cursor, or any host that launches node dist/index.js.

Example claude_desktop_config.json snippet:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-inspector": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/pdf-inspector-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

extract_text

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
filePath	string	—	Path to PDF
maxLength	number	10000	Max characters to return

count_pages

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
filePath	string	—	Path to PDF

ocr_pdf

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
filePath	string	—	Path to PDF
pages	number[]	[]	1-based page numbers (empty = all)
language	string	"eng"	Tesseract language code
scale	number	2.0	Render scale (higher = sharper, slower)

Note: ocr_pdf uses pdfjs-dist to render each page to an image, then passes the PNG to tesseract.js. For multi-page PDFs this can take several seconds per page.

Zero-Config Design

• No .env files or external services required.
• pdf-parse handles text extraction with no setup.
• tesseract.js bundles WASM and language data automatically.
• pdfjs-dist uses the bundled pdf.worker.mjs file.
• canvas relies on standard npm prebuilds.