pdf

This MCP server provides a Rust-based PDF management tool that lets Claude-Desktop-powered assistants search for DRM-free technical PDFs, download them, and manage a local library. It supports commands to search for PDFs by keywords, download selected titles from the search results, list your current PDFs in a clean table, extract text from PDFs, and optionally upload the documents to Google Drive for NotebookLM workflows. You can trigger actions by speaking or typing natural language requests like “Pythonの本を探して” to search, or “Think Pythonをダウンロードして” to fetch a specific PDF. The server exposes a compact CLI and is intended to be remotely controlled by Claude/Cursor/Codex clients via MCP, enabling seamless cross-tool usage in your workflow.

Prerequisites:

• Rust toolchain (stable) installed on the machine
• Access to a machine where you’ll run the MCP server and where Claude Desktop can reach it

Step-by-step:

1. Clone the repository and build the release binary

git clone https://github.com/tacyan/pdf-mcp-server.git
cd pdf-mcp-server
cargo build --release

2. Verify the binary exists

ls target/release/pdf-mcp-server

3. Install and configure Claude Desktop to reference the MCP server (see Step 2 in the README for the config snippet). Example path in config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pdf-manager": {
      "command": "/YOUR_PATH/pdf-mcp-server/target/release/pdf-mcp-server",
      "args": [],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

4. Restart Claude Desktop to apply the MCP server configuration.

Notes:

• Replace /YOUR_PATH/ with the absolute path where the binary resides.
• If you modify the build path, update the MCP config accordingly.

Tips and common issues:

• DRM-free only: the server downloads only DRM-free PDFs. It will refuse DRM-protected or illegal copies.
• PDFs are stored by default under the user's home directory, e.g., ~/.pdf-mcp-server/pdfs/ on macOS/Linux and %USERPROFILE%.pdf-mcp-server\pdfs\ on Windows.
• The server exposes a config subcommand for each client (cursor/codex/claude-desktop) to auto-generate templates. Use the config feature to ensure the correct absolute paths are used when moving machines.
• If you encounter path or permission errors, ensure the binary has execute permissions and that Claude Desktop can access the path where the binary resides.
• For Google Drive integration, follow the CONFIG_GUIDE.md guidance in the repository for OAuth scopes and related setup.
• The server is Rust-based; keep Rust toolchain updated to avoid compatibility issues with the build artifacts.