Papyrio PDF Tools

Compress, convert, merge, split and OCR PDFs on your own machine. Reads and writes local files, so an assistant can chain operations without uploading and downloading between every step.

GitHub

Documentation

papyrio-mcp

An MCP server for the Papyrio PDF API. 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