Papyrio PDF Tools

papyrio-mcp

An MCP server for the Papyrio PDF API. Setup for Claude, Cursor and VS Code: papyrio.net/mcp. It lets an assistant compress, merge, OCR and convert PDFs on your own machine, reading and writing local files, so multi-step work does not mean uploading and downloading between every step.

OCR every scan in ~/invoices, merge them into one PDF, compress it under 5 MB

is four tool calls the assistant makes by itself.

Install

Add this to your Claude Desktop config:

macOS ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json Windows %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "papyrio": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "papyrio-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The tools appear under the connector icon.

API key

The server works without one, metered as ordinary free web traffic: three operations a day per IP address. Enough to see whether it is useful.

For real use, subscribe on RapidAPI and pass the key:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "papyrio": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "papyrio-mcp"],
      "env": { "PAPYRIO_API_KEY": "your-rapidapi-key" }
    }
  }
}

The free RapidAPI tier is 50 requests a month and needs no card.

Tools

Tool	Does	Writes
compress_pdf	Shrinks a PDF, 30–80% on image-heavy files	.pdf
merge_pdfs	Joins 2–10 PDFs in order	.pdf
split_pdf	Separates every page into its own file	.zip
extract_pdf_text	Returns the text layer as UTF-8	.txt
pdf_to_word	Rebuilds the document as an editable .docx	.docx
pdf_to_jpg	Renders every page as a JPG	.zip
ocr_pdf	Adds a searchable text layer to a scan	.pdf
office_to_pdf	Word, PowerPoint or Excel to PDF	.pdf
image_to_pdf	Wraps a JPG, PNG or WebP in a PDF page	.pdf
webpage_to_pdf	Renders a public URL in a headless browser	.pdf
protect_pdf	Encrypts with AES-256	.pdf
unlock_pdf	Removes a password you already know	.pdf

Every tool takes absolute paths. output_path is optional and defaults to the input name with a -papyrio suffix — except webpage_to_pdf, which has no input file to derive a name from and so requires it.

Adding a tool

Add an entry to src/tools.ts. The MCP tool, its input schema and the HTTP call are all generated from it.

Testing

npm run build
PAPYRIO_API_KEY=your-key node smoke.mjs

Drives all twelve tools over the real MCP protocol against the live API and checks the returned file's magic bytes, so a JSON error body named .pdf fails rather than passes. Without a key it runs on the guest tier, where three operations a day means most cases will hit rate_limit_exceeded.

Develop

npm install
npm run build

Point your config at the local build while working on it:

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

Privacy: files are sent to the Papyrio API, processed in memory, and discarded when the response is sent. Nothing is stored.

Licence

MIT