Pdfops MCP

Fast operations on the PDF files

Documentation

pdfops

Fast PDF tools for AI agents.
One binary, 31 tools, JSON in and out. Works as a CLI, an MCP server and a Rust library.

$ pdfops tables invoice.pdf --format markdown        # tables as tables, not as a blob of text
$ pdfops redact contract.pdf --text "Jan Kowalski" -o safe.pdf   # removed from the file, then verified
$ pdfops text scan.pdf --ocr --ocr-lang pol+eng      # OCR only where there is no text layer
$ pdfops stamp offer.pdf --image signature.png --x 380 --y 690 -o signed.pdf

Why pdfops

Built for agents. Every command returns one JSON document, errors say what to do next, and text can be read under a character budget with a resume point.
Everything in one place. Reading, layout, tables, OCR, rendering, page surgery, stamping, redaction, annotations, signatures, forms, encryption, inspection and creation: 31 tools behind one schema.
Nothing to set up. A single binary with no PDF libraries, no Python and no runtime. Only OCR needs an extra program, and pdfops can fetch the language data itself.
Fast. Files open in milliseconds whatever their size, and page work runs on all cores. See the benchmarks.
Redaction you can trust. Content is deleted from the page, not covered, and the result is checked by a second interpreter before anything is written.
Safe on files you did not write. Every command runs under a memory cap and a time limit, the MCP server runs each call in a process of its own and can be confined to one directory, and every command is exercised against a corpus of 988 hostile and malformed PDFs in CI.
Knows what a file is up to. scan reports scripts, actions that fire by themselves, attached programs, disguised names and text that is extracted but cannot be seen, the carrier of prompt injection. sanitize removes the active content and proves it by scanning the result.

Quick start

As an MCP server, with nothing installed beforehand:

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

For Claude Code: claude mcp add pdfops -- npx -y pdfops-cli mcp.

Tools are named pdf_info, pdf_text, pdf_redact and so on, and take the same arguments as the CLI. Relative paths resolve against the server's working directory.

To keep an agent inside one folder, add --root: every path outside it is refused, including paths that arrive inside a document, and relative paths resolve against it.

{ "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "pdfops-cli", "mcp", "--root", "/home/me/documents"] }

Install

Method	Command	Needs
npm	`npm install -g pdfops-cli` or `npx pdfops-cli`	Node 18+
Prebuilt, via cargo	`cargo binstall pdfops`	cargo-binstall
From source	`cargo install pdfops`	Rust 1.92+
Docker	`docker run --rm -i -v "$PWD:/work" ghcr.io/kayzedd/pdfops mcp --root /work`	Docker
Manual	download an archive and put `pdfops` on your `PATH`	nothing

The npm package is called pdfops-cli and installs the pdfops command. It is a small launcher: on first run it downloads the binary for your platform from the GitHub release, checks it against the published SHA-256 sum and caches it. Prebuilt binaries cover Linux (glibc and musl) and macOS on x86-64 and ARM64, and Windows on x86-64. The Docker image is Alpine with pdfops and tesseract with English; add -v for the folder to work in.

OCR additionally needs the tesseract program; nothing else does. Language data is fetched on request, without administrator rights:

pdfops ocr-langs                     # is tesseract there, which languages can be used
pdfops ocr-install --lang pol+eng    # download language data into the user's data directory
pdfops ocr-install --engine          # install tesseract itself where that needs no password

Tools

	Command	What it does
Read	`info`	Page count, page size, metadata, encryption, outline and form summary
	`text`	Text page by page, with a character budget and optional OCR fallback
	`search`	Find text or a regex, returns pages and snippets
	`layout`	Bounding box, font and size of every line or word
	`tables`	Tables as rows of cells, Markdown or CSV
	`outline`	Bookmarks with target pages
	`annotations`	Highlights, comments, links and other markup, with positions
	`signatures`	Digital signatures: who signed, and whether the document changed since
	`render`	Pages to PNG, to look at charts, scans and layout
	`images`	The images drawn on pages, as files
	`ocr`	Recognised text of scanned pages, optionally written into a searchable copy
	`scan`	Scripts, automatic actions, attachments, disguised content and hidden text, by severity
Build	`create`	A new PDF from Markdown
	`merge`	Several PDFs into one
	`pages`	Keep, reorder, duplicate or delete pages
	`split`	Split by page count or by ranges
Edit	`rotate`	Rotate pages by multiples of 90 degrees
	`stamp`	Watermark, header, footer, page numbers, an image such as a signature, or a QR code
	`annotate`	Add a highlight, underline, strike-out, box, note or link
	`replace`	Replace text in place, in the document's own font where possible
	`redact`	Remove text, images and drawings in areas or matching text, then verify
	`set-meta`	Title, author, subject, keywords, creator
	`compress`	Shrink: lossless by default, optionally re-encoding and downscaling images
Forms	`forms`	Fields with their types, values and options
	`fill`	Fill fields by name
Protect	`encrypt`	AES-256 passwords and permissions
	`decrypt`	Remove password protection
	`sign`	Sign digitally with a certificate, keeping earlier signatures valid
	`sanitize`	Remove scripts, risky actions, attachments, XFA and media, then verify by scanning
Setup	`ocr-langs`	Whether tesseract is installed and which languages are usable
	`ocr-install`	Download OCR language data, optionally install tesseract

Run pdfops <command> --help for the options of each.

Examples

$ pdfops info manual.pdf
{"encrypted":false,"file":"manual.pdf","form_fields":0,
 "metadata":{"created":"2026-06-30T09:07:46+00:00","producer":"GPL Ghostscript 10.07.1"},
 "outline_entries":645,"page_size_pt":{"height":792.0,"width":595.0},"pages":357,"pdf_version":"1.3",
 "size_bytes":1386723,"uniform_page_size":true}

$ pdfops search manual.pdf "calling convention" --max-results 1 --context 40
{"file":"manual.pdf","matches":[{"match":"Calling Convention","page":12,
 "snippet":"... 10.5.1 The Pascal Calling Convention ..."}],"query":"calling convention",
 "total_matches":17,"unreadable_pages":[]}

Reading:

pdfops text manual.pdf --pages 12- --max-chars 4000     # resume_at_page says where to continue
pdfops text scan.pdf --ocr --ocr-lang pol+eng           # OCR only the pages that have no text
pdfops tables report.pdf --pages 4 --format markdown
pdfops layout report.pdf --pages 4 --level words        # bbox, font and size per word
pdfops render report.pdf --pages 1-3 --dpi 150 -o out/  # look at charts and layout
pdfops --stream ocr scan.pdf --lang pol                 # a line per page as it finishes
pdfops ocr scan.pdf --lang pol -o searchable.pdf        # the same file, with text to search
pdfops images report.pdf -o images/

Building and page work:

pdfops create notes.md -o notes.pdf
pdfops merge a.pdf b.pdf -o merged.pdf
pdfops pages in.pdf --keep "3,1,5-" -o out.pdf
pdfops split in.pdf --every 10 -o parts/

Editing:

pdfops stamp in.pdf --text "Poufne · {page}/{pages}" --position footer -o out.pdf
pdfops stamp in.pdf --image signature.png --x 380 --y 690 --width 140 --pages last -o out.pdf
pdfops stamp in.pdf --qr "https://example.com/doc/42" --anchor bottom-right -o out.pdf
pdfops redact in.pdf --text "Jan Kowalski" --text "\d{11}" --regex -o redacted.pdf
pdfops redact in.pdf --rect "2:100,200,300,220" -o redacted.pdf
pdfops replace in.pdf --find "2025" --with "2026" -o out.pdf
pdfops replace in.pdf --find "2025" --with "2026" --dry-run -o out.pdf   # the plan, nothing written
pdfops compress in.pdf --max-image-edge 1600 --image-quality 70 -o small.pdf

Forms and protection:

pdfops forms form.pdf
pdfops fill form.pdf --set name="Ada Lovelace" --set agree=true -o filled.pdf
pdfops encrypt in.pdf --owner-password secret --deny-copy -o locked.pdf
pdfops sign in.pdf --p12 identity.p12 --p12-password secret --reason "Approved" -o signed.pdf
pdfops sign in.pdf --cert me.crt --key me.key --visible "1:360,700,560,760" -o signed.pdf
pdfops signatures signed.pdf                            # valid, unchanged, who and when
pdfops signatures signed.pdf --trust company-root.pem   # and whether the signer is one of yours
pdfops sign in.pdf --p12 identity.p12 --tsa http://timestamp.digicert.com -o signed.pdf
pdfops scan inbox/offer.pdf                             # what is in it, before reading it
pdfops sanitize inbox/offer.pdf -o offer-clean.pdf      # scripts, actions, attachments removed

Markup:

pdfops annotate in.pdf --text "liability" --comment "check with legal" -o marked.pdf
pdfops annotate in.pdf --kind link --rect "1:72,50,300,70" --url https://example.com -o out.pdf
pdfops annotations marked.pdf

Conventions

Output. Every command prints one JSON document on stdout. Errors go to stderr as {"error": "..."} with exit status 1. Add --pretty to indent.
Progress. With --stream, ocr, text --ocr, render, images, split, redact and replace print one line of JSON per finished page or file, {"event":"progress","step":"render","done":7,"total":20,"page":12,...}, and the usual result as the last line. Pages are worked on in parallel, so events come in the order the work finishes; each names its page and done rises by one per line. Over MCP the same events arrive as notifications/progress when the call carries a progress token.
Writing. Commands that write take -o. It may be the input file: output goes through a temporary file.
Pages are 1-based and comma separated: 3, 2-5, 7- (to the end), -4 (from the start), 5-2 (descending), last, odd, even, all.
Positions are in points with the origin at the top-left corner of the page as displayed, y growing downwards. layout reports them, stamp --x/--y and redact --rect accept them, and a pixel of render --dpi 72 is exactly one point.

How it compares

	pdfops	PyMuPDF	pypdf	pdfplumber	qpdf	poppler-utils
Text extraction	✓	✓	✓	✓	–	✓
Word positions and fonts	✓	✓	–	✓	–	positions
Tables	✓	✓	–	✓	–	–
Render pages	✓	✓	–	✓	–	✓
OCR	✓	✓	–	–	–	–
Merge, split, reorder, rotate	✓	✓	✓	–	✓	partly
Text, image and QR stamps	✓	✓	by overlay	–	by overlay	–
Redaction that removes content	✓	✓	–	–	–	–
Redaction verified before writing	✓	–	–	–	–	–
Replace text in place	✓	–	–	–	–	–
Fill forms	✓	✓	✓	–	–	–
Encrypt and decrypt	✓	✓	✓	–	✓	–
Add and list annotations	✓	✓	✓	list	–	–
Sign digitally	✓	–	–	–	–	–
Verify signatures	✓	–	–	–	–	✓
Inspect for active content and hidden text	✓	–	–	–	–	–
Remove active content	✓	✓	–	–	–	–
Memory and time limits per call	✓	–	–	–	–	–
Create from Markdown	✓	from HTML	–	–	–	–
Built-in MCP server and tool schemas	✓	–	–	–	–	–
JSON from every command	✓	library	library	library	partly	–
Runtime needed	none	Python	Python	Python	none	none
License	MIT	AGPL or commercial	BSD	MIT	Apache-2.0	GPL

PyMuPDF is the closest in scope and is an excellent library; it is written in C, needs Python, and its AGPL license matters if you ship it. pdfops trades some breadth for a single MIT-licensed binary whose tools an agent can call directly.

Benchmarks

Best of 3 whole-process runs, start-up included, since that is what one tool call costs an agent. Document: the NASM 2.16 manual, 308 pages and 1.2 MB; images on a 352 page, 2.6 MB book with pictures; forms on a one page form. Machine: 8 core AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Windows 11. Versions: poppler 25.07, qpdf 12.4, PyMuPDF 1.28, pypdf 6.19, pdfplumber 0.11, pyHanko 0.37 (CLI 0.5), tesseract 5.5. The fastest entry of each row is bold; n/a marks a tool that was installed and did not complete the task. PyMuPDF's entry for sanitize is its scrub.

Task	pdfops	command line tool	PyMuPDF	pypdf	pdfplumber
`info`	7 ms	`pdfinfo` 12 ms	129 ms	203 ms	222 ms
`text`, all pages	53 ms	`pdftotext` 540 ms	297 ms	1273 ms	11.3 s
`search`, all pages	53 ms	-	326 ms	-	-
`layout`, every word with its box	194 ms	-	346 ms	-	10.9 s
`tables`, 50 pages	20 ms	-	1558 ms	-	1629 ms
`outline`	15 ms	-	128 ms	221 ms	-
`render`, 20 pages at 150 dpi	41 ms	`pdftoppm` 2677 ms	593 ms	-	-
`ocr`, one page	1087 ms	`tesseract` 759 ms	-	-	-
`images`, all embedded images	230 ms	`pdfimages` 5621 ms	1297 ms	1553 ms	-
`create`, 100 sections of Markdown	12 ms	-	-	-	-
`merge`, three copies	57 ms	`qpdf` 204 ms	401 ms	2037 ms	-
`pages`, keep 10	17 ms	`qpdf` 138 ms	138 ms	285 ms	-
`split`, one file per page	156 ms	`pdfseparate` 46.0 s	437 ms	2513 ms	-
`rotate`, all pages	20 ms	`qpdf` 144 ms	147 ms	769 ms	-
`stamp`, text on every page	21 ms	-	279 ms	-	-
`stamp`, QR code on every page	121 ms	-	-	-	-
`annotations`, list	18 ms	-	227 ms	-	309 ms
`annotate`, highlight a word on every page	291 ms	-	700 ms	-	-
`redact`, a word on every page	564 ms	-	1926 ms	-	-
`replace`, a word on every page	575 ms	-	-	-	-
`scan`, structure and hidden text	232 ms	-	-	-	-
`scan`, structure only	16 ms	-	-	-	-
`sanitize`	32 ms	-	2072 ms	-	-
`set-meta`	19 ms	-	140 ms	771 ms	-
`compress`	31 ms	`qpdf` 179 ms	378 ms	-	-
`encrypt`, AES-256	25 ms	`qpdf` 174 ms	150 ms	825 ms	-
`decrypt`	38 ms	`qpdf` 170 ms	158 ms	875 ms	-
`sign`, RSA-2048	23 ms	`pyhanko` 615 ms	-	-	-
`signatures`, verify	16 ms	`pdfsig` n/a	-	-	-
`forms`, list fields	7 ms	-	121 ms	169 ms	-
`fill`, one field	9 ms	-	130 ms	198 ms	-

Reproduce with scripts/bench.py on any document.

Why it is fast: info, layout, tables, render, images and ocr read objects on demand, so opening a file costs a few milliseconds whatever its size. Text extraction, layout, tables, rendering, splitting, image export and OCR run on all cores. Page operations copy only the objects the selected pages reach, so output size and time follow the selection, not the source.

Using it without MCP

pdfops tools prints [{"name", "description", "inputSchema"}] for every command. Pass these to any function calling API, then run the call through the CLI or the library.

let result = pdfops::tools::call(
    "pdf_text",
    serde_json::json!({"input": "report.pdf", "pages": "1-3"}),
)?;

Typed entry points live in pdfops::ops, for example pdfops::ops::read::text(TextArgs { .. }).

Behaviour worth knowing

The short version. pdfops <command> --help has the detail for each command.

Any script. Text that stamp, fill, replace, create and ocr -o draw is shaped and embedded as font subsets; where no one font has every character, several share the text. Hebrew and Arabic are laid out from the right and read back in the order they are read in, so a word is found by typing it. Some Indic and Thai clusters that pdfops itself wrote read back with their characters regrouped.
Redaction removes, it does not cover. Glyphs, image pixels in any encoding, drawings and annotations under an area are deleted, a text to redact is also struck from metadata and bookmarks, and the result is read back by a second interpreter before anything is written.
Replace writes in the document's own font where it has the glyphs and moves the rest of the line along; values of text fields and comments of annotations are changed too. A line that grows past its column passes its last words on to the next line, and the paragraph gets a line more if there is room below. Where the paragraph cannot be told with certainty the line is left as it is and overflow_pt says by how much it runs over; --dry-run shows it first.
Dry run. redact, replace, annotate and stamp take --dry-run: all the work, nothing written.
Scan reports scripts, actions, attachments, disguised content and hidden text by severity. It is not a virus scanner and never calls a file safe. Sanitize removes the active content and scans the result before writing it.
Tables with ruling lines are read cell by cell. Tables without are inferred from alignment (detected_by: alignment) and deserve a look.
OCR is tesseract's. ocr -o writes the recognised text into a copy as an invisible layer.
Signatures. sign appends, so earlier signatures stay valid. It can show the signature on a page (--visible) and embed a timestamp authority's statement of the time (--tsa). signatures checks that the bytes are unchanged and who signed; with --trust it checks the signer's chain against certificates you name, and with --revocation their revocation lists. Any other change to a signed PDF invalidates its signatures, as it must.
Merging and page work keep bookmarks and links that lead to pages in the output, and rename the form fields of later inputs doc2.<name> so equal names do not share a value.
Damaged files are repaired for reading and rebuilt for writing; the result then carries repaired_inputs. A damaged file that is also encrypted is not rebuilt. Protected files stay protected when edited; only decrypt removes the protection.
Limits. 4 GiB and 300 seconds per command by default: --max-memory, --timeout, or PDFOPS_MAX_MEMORY and PDFOPS_TIMEOUT; 0 lifts a limit. Rasters are capped at 64 megapixels.
Create takes Markdown, and the HTML in it for what it says: headings, emphasis, links, lists, tables. How it should look is not read: there is no CSS.

Development

cargo test                                # under a second; fixtures are generated in memory
cargo test -- --ignored                   # OCR test, needs tesseract with a language pack
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo fmt --check
scripts/bench.py --help                   # regenerate the benchmark table

Built on lopdf (object model), hayro (text, rendering, positions and image decoding), rustybuzz (text shaping), subsetter (font embedding) and pulldown-cmark (Markdown).

License

MIT