Go-Docs MCP
> **Install and Go.** One command, single binary. Your AI reads any document — PDF, text, Markdown, DOCX, images.
MCP server for multi-format document access — read, search, extract images, OCR, and fetch documents from URLs via the [Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io). 13 tools, 6 formats, zero configuration.
```bash
go install github.com/drolosoft/go-docs-mcp@latest
# That's it. Single binary, starts in milliseconds.
```
For a deeper look at why an MCP server beats a direct tool, see **[Why MCP?](doc/WHY-MCP.md)**
---
## 🏆 Why Go-Docs MCP?
Every other document MCP server handles **one format** — a PDF server for PDFs, a DOCX server for DOCX. You'd need three separate servers to read three formats.
| | Go-Docs MCP | Others |
|--|:---:|:---:|
| Single binary, no runtime | **Yes** | Need Node/Python |
| `go install` one-liner | **Yes** | npm+deps or pip+venv |
| Multi-format (6 types) | **Yes** | One format each |
| Full-text search | **Yes** | Partial or none |
| OCR (scanned PDFs + images) | **Yes** | Rare |
| Image & table extraction | **Yes** | Partial |
| Document outline | **Yes** | Rare |
| Fetch from URL | **Yes** | Rare |
| Dir-locked, read-only | **Yes** | Varies |
| Smart caching | **Yes** | No |
| Fully offline | **Yes** | Yes |
Go-Docs MCP reads them all from a single binary — fast, secure, and dependency-free at runtime.
---
## 📋 Features — 13 Tools
| Category | Tool | Description |
|----------|------|-------------|
| **Discovery** | `list_documents` | List all documents with metadata (format, pages, size) |
| **Discovery** | `list_formats` | List supported formats and dependency status |
| **Reading** | `read_document` | Full text, specific page, or page ranges from any format |
| **Reading** | `read_url` | Download from URL and extract text (50MB max) |
| **Reading** | `get_document_summary` | First 3 pages as a quick overview |
| **Search** | `search_document` | Case-insensitive full-text search with context |
| **Analysis** | `get_document_metadata` | Title, author, dates, version, page count |
| **Analysis** | `get_document_outline` | Table of contents / bookmarks |
| **Analysis** | `extract_tables` | Tables as structured data |
| **Analysis** | `extract_images` | Images as base64 (max 10 per call) |
| **OCR** | `ocr_document` | Force OCR on scanned/image-based PDFs |
| **OCR** | `read_image` | Extract text from PNG, JPG, TIFF via OCR |
| **Export** | `convert_to_markdown` | Convert any document to clean Markdown |
**Highlights:**
- **Fast** — mtime-based in-memory caching avoids redundant extraction
- **Multi-format** — PDF, TXT, MD, CSV, DOCX, and images from one server
- **OCR** — automatic fallback to tesseract for scanned documents
- **Secure** — directory-locked with path traversal prevention
- **Portable** — works on macOS and Linux
---
## 📄 Supported Formats
| Format | Dependencies | Notes |
|--------|-------------|-------|
| PDF | poppler (`pdftotext`, `pdfinfo`, `pdfimages`, `pdftoppm`) | Full support — text, images, metadata, OCR fallback |
| TXT, MD, CSV | None | Native, zero dependencies |
| DOCX | pandoc (optional) | Word document extraction |
| Images (PNG, JPG, TIFF) | tesseract (optional) | OCR text extraction |
---
## 📦 Prerequisites
- **Go 1.25+** ([install](https://go.dev/doc/install))
- **poppler** — required for PDF support
- **tesseract** _(optional)_ — enables OCR for scanned docs and images
- **pandoc** _(optional)_ — enables DOCX support
```bash
# macOS
brew install poppler
brew install tesseract # optional: OCR
brew install pandoc # optional: DOCX
# Debian/Ubuntu
apt install poppler-utils
apt install tesseract-ocr # optional: OCR
apt install pandoc # optional: DOCX
# Fedora/RHEL
dnf install poppler-utils
dnf install tesseract # optional: OCR
dnf install pandoc # optional: DOCX
```
> **Note:** TXT, MD, and CSV work out of the box with zero dependencies. Install only what you need.
---
## 🚀 Installation
### From source
```bash
go install github.com/drolosoft/go-docs-mcp@latest
```
### Build locally
```bash
git clone https://github.com/drolosoft/go-docs-mcp.git
cd go-docs-mcp
make build # produces ./go-docs-mcp
make install # installs to /usr/local/bin/
```
---
## ⚙️ Configuration
Go-Docs MCP reads documents from a configured directory. Set `DOCS_MCP_DIR` to change it:
| Variable | Default | Description |
|----------|---------|-------------|
| `DOCS_MCP_DIR` | `~/.docs-mcp/documents/` | Directory containing documents to serve |
| `PDF_MCP_DIR` | _(legacy alias)_ | Backward-compatible alias for `DOCS_MCP_DIR` |
Place your documents in the directory and the server finds them automatically. All supported formats are detected.
---
## 💡 Usage
### With Claude Code
Add to your `.claude/settings.json`:
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"docs": {
"command": "go-docs-mcp",
"env": {
"DOCS_MCP_DIR": "/path/to/your/documents"
}
}
}
}
```
### With Claude Desktop
Add to `~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json` (macOS):
```json
{
"mcpServers": {
"docs": {
"command": "/usr/local/bin/go-docs-mcp",
"env": {
"DOCS_MCP_DIR": "/path/to/your/documents"
}
}
}
}
```
### With any MCP client
The server communicates over **stdio** using JSON-RPC 2.0:
```bash
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}' | go-docs-mcp
```
---
## 📖 Tool Reference
### `list_documents`
Lists all documents in the configured directory with format detection.
**Parameters:** None
**Example output:**
```json
[
{
"filename": "architecture-guide.pdf",
"format": "pdf",
"title": "architecture-guide",
"pages": 42,
"size_bytes": 1048576
},
{
"filename": "notes.md",
"format": "markdown",
"title": "notes",
"size_bytes": 4096
}
]
```
---
### `list_formats`
Lists all supported document formats and their dependency status.
**Parameters:** None
---
### `read_document`
Reads the extracted text content of a document. Automatically falls back to OCR if the document is image-based/scanned and `pdftotext` returns empty text.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to read |
| `page` | number | No | Single page number (1-based). Omit for full text. |
| `pages` | string | No | Page ranges, e.g. "1-5", "10", "1-3,7,10-12". Overrides `page`. |
**Example input:**
```json
{
"filename": "architecture-guide.pdf",
"pages": "1-3,10-12"
}
```
---
### `search_document`
Searches within a document for lines matching a query. Returns matches with 2 lines of context and approximate page numbers.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to search |
| `query` | string | Yes | Search query (case-insensitive) |
**Example output:**
```
Found 3 matches for 'microservice' in architecture-guide.pdf:
--- Match 1 (page ~2, line 45) ---
The system is composed of several
> microservice components that communicate
via gRPC and message queues.
```
---
### `get_document_summary`
Returns the text from the first 3 pages of a document as a quick summary.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to summarize |
---
### `get_document_metadata`
Returns full document metadata.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to get metadata for |
**Example output:**
```json
{
"title": "Architecture Guide",
"author": "Jane Doe",
"subject": "System Design",
"creator": "LaTeX",
"producer": "pdfTeX",
"creation_date": "Thu May 15 10:30:00 2025",
"modification_date": "Thu May 15 10:30:00 2025",
"pages": 42,
"file_size_bytes": 1048576,
"pdf_version": "1.5"
}
```
---
### `get_document_outline`
Extracts the document outline (table of contents / bookmarks) as a structured list.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to extract outline from |
---
### `extract_tables`
Extracts tables from a document as structured data.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to extract tables from |
| `page` | number | No | Specific page to extract from. Omit for all pages. |
---
### `extract_images`
Extracts images from a document as base64-encoded data. Returns up to 10 images per call.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The document filename to extract images from |
| `page` | number | No | Specific page to extract from. Omit for all pages. |
**Example output:**
```json
[
{
"page": 1,
"index": 0,
"format": "jpeg",
"width": 800,
"height": 600,
"data_base64": "/9j/4AAQSkZJRg..."
}
]
```
---
### `read_url`
Downloads a document from a URL and extracts its text content. Maximum file size: 50MB.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `url` | string | Yes | The URL of the document to download and read |
| `pages` | string | No | Page ranges to extract, e.g. "1-5". Omit for full text. |
**Example input:**
```json
{
"url": "https://example.com/report.pdf",
"pages": "1-3"
}
```
---
### `ocr_document`
Forces OCR on a PDF document using tesseract. Useful for scanned/image-based PDFs or when `pdftotext` returns garbled text. Requires `tesseract` and `pdftoppm`.
> **Note:** `read_document` already auto-detects image-based PDFs and falls back to OCR. Use `ocr_document` when you want to force OCR regardless, or need to specify a non-English language.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The PDF filename to OCR |
| `page` | number | No | Specific page to OCR (1-based). Omit for all pages. |
| `language` | string | No | Tesseract language code (default: `eng`). Use `spa`, `fra`, etc. |
**Example input:**
```json
{
"filename": "scanned-contract.pdf",
"page": 1,
"language": "spa"
}
```
---
### `read_image`
Extracts text from an image file using OCR. Supports PNG, JPG, and TIFF. Requires `tesseract`.
**Parameters:**
| Name | Type | Required | Description |
|------|------|----------|-------------|
| `filename` | string | Yes | The image filename to read (PNG, JPG, TIFF) |
| `language` | string | No | Tesseract language code (default: `eng`). |
**Example input:**
```json
{
"filename": "receipt.png",
"language": "eng"
}
```
---
## 🔒 Security
- **Directory-locked** — only files within `DOCS_MCP_DIR` are accessible
- **Path traversal prevention** — filenames sanitized; `../` rejected
- **Extension filter** — only supported formats served
- **Read-only** — no write operations
- **URL downloads** — 50MB limit, Content-Type validated, temp files cleaned immediately
---
## 🛠️ Development
```bash
make build # Build the binary
make test # Run tests with race detector
make clean # Remove build artifacts
```
### Project structure
```
go-docs-mcp/
main.go # MCP server setup, 12 tool registrations
internal/
pdf/
reader.go # Document extraction, caching, search, metadata, images, OCR
Makefile # Build targets
go.mod # Module definition
```
---
## 🦙 Glama Score
---
## 📄 License
[MIT](LICENSE) - Copyright 2026 Drolosoft
---
## 💛 Support
---
**[Drolosoft](https://drolosoft.com)** — *Tools we wish existed*