go-docs-mcp

Install and Go. One command, single binary. Your AI reads any document — PDF, text, Markdown, DOCX, images.

Go MCP server for multi-format document access — read, search, extract images, OCR, and fetch documents from URLs via the Model Context Protocol.

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?

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🏆 Why go-docs-mcp?

	Capability	go-docs-mcp	Node/TS	Python	Rust
⚡	Single binary, no runtime	✅	❌ needs Node	❌ needs Python	✅
📦	go install one-liner	✅	❌ npm+deps	❌ pip+venv	❌ cargo
📄	Multi-format (6 types)	✅	❌ one format	❌ one format	❌ one format
🔍	Full-text search	✅	⚠️ partial	✅	✅
👁️	OCR (scanned PDFs)	✅	❌	❌	⚠️ partial
🖼️	Image extraction	✅	⚠️ partial	✅	❌
📊	Table extraction	✅	⚠️ partial	✅	✅
📑	Document outline	✅	❌	❌	⚠️ partial
🌐	Fetch from URL	✅	⚠️ partial	❌	❌
🔒	Dir-locked, read-only	✅	⚠️ varies	⚠️ varies	✅
💾	Smart caching	✅	❌	❌	❌
🏠	Fully offline	✅	✅	✅	✅

Every other document MCP server handles one format — a PDF server for PDFs, a DOCX server for DOCX. You'd need three tools to read three formats. go-docs-mcp reads them all from a single binary.

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📋 Features — 12 Tools in 5 Categories

Category	Tool	Description
Discovery	list_documents	List all available documents with metadata (filename, format, page count, size)
Discovery	list_formats	List supported document formats and their dependencies
Reading	read_document	Read full text, a specific page, or page ranges from any supported document
Reading	read_url	Download a document from a URL and extract its text content
Reading	get_document_summary	Get the first 3 pages of text as a quick overview
Search	search_document	Case-insensitive full-text search with context and page hints
Analysis	get_document_metadata	Get full document metadata (title, author, dates, version, etc.)
Analysis	get_document_outline	Extract document outline / table of contents
Analysis	extract_tables	Extract tables from documents as structured data
Analysis	extract_images	Extract images from a document as base64-encoded data (max 10 per call)
OCR	ocr_document	Force OCR on a PDF — for scanned/image-based documents or garbled text
OCR	read_image	Extract text from an image file (PNG, JPG, TIFF) via OCR

• Fast — mtime-based in-memory caching avoids redundant extraction
• Multi-format — PDF, TXT, MD, CSV, DOCX, and images from a single server
• OCR — automatic fallback to tesseract for image-based/scanned documents
• Secure — directory-locked access with path traversal prevention
• Simple — single binary, stdio transport, zero configuration required
• Portable — works on macOS and Linux

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📄 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 or Go lib (optional)	Word document extraction
Images (PNG, JPG, TIFF)	tesseract (optional)	OCR text extraction from image files

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📦 Prerequisites

• Go 1.25+ (install)
• poppler (provides pdftotext, pdfinfo, pdfimages, pdftoppm) — required for PDF support
• tesseract (optional, for OCR support — scanned PDFs and images)
• pandoc (optional, for DOCX support)

# macOS
brew install poppler
brew install tesseract        # optional: enables OCR for scanned docs + images
brew install pandoc           # optional: enables DOCX support

# Debian/Ubuntu
apt install poppler-utils
apt install tesseract-ocr     # optional: enables OCR for scanned docs + images
apt install pandoc            # optional: enables DOCX support

# Fedora/RHEL
dnf install poppler-utils
dnf install tesseract         # optional: enables OCR for scanned docs + images
dnf install pandoc            # optional: enables DOCX support

Format note: TXT, MD, and CSV work out of the box with zero dependencies. PDF requires poppler. DOCX requires pandoc. Images require tesseract. Install only what you need.

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🚀 Installation

From source

go install github.com/drolosoft/go-docs-mcp@latest

Build locally

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/

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⚙️ Configuration

The server reads documents from a configured directory. Set DOCS_MCP_DIR to change it:

Variable	Default	Description
DOCS_MCP_DIR	~/.docs-mcp/documents/	Directory containing document files to serve
PDF_MCP_DIR	(backward compat alias)	Legacy alias — works the same as DOCS_MCP_DIR

Place your documents in the directory and the server will find them automatically. All supported formats (PDF, TXT, MD, CSV, DOCX, images) are detected.

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💡 Usage

With Claude Code

Add to your .claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docs": {
      "command": "go-docs-mcp",
      "env": {
        "DOCS_MCP_DIR": "/path/to/your/documents"
      }
    }
  }
}

With Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop configuration (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "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. Launch the binary and pipe JSON-RPC messages to stdin:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}' | go-docs-mcp

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📖 Tool Reference

list_documents

Lists all documents in the configured directory with format detection.

Parameters: None

Example output:

[
  {
    "filename": "architecture-guide.pdf",
    "format": "pdf",
    "title": "architecture-guide",
    "pages": 42,
    "size_bytes": 1048576
  },
  {
    "filename": "notes.md",
    "format": "markdown",
    "title": "notes",
    "size_bytes": 4096
  }
]

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list_formats

Lists all supported document formats and their dependency status.

Parameters: None

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read_document

Reads the extracted text content of a document. For PDFs, 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:

{
  "filename": "architecture-guide.pdf",
  "pages": "1-3,10-12"
}

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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.

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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

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get_document_metadata

Returns full document metadata.

Parameters:

Name	Type	Required	Description
filename	string	Yes	The document filename to get metadata for

Example output:

{
  "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

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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.

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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:

[
  {
    "page": 1,
    "index": 0,
    "format": "jpeg",
    "width": 800,
    "height": 600,
    "data_base64": "/9j/4AAQSkZJRg..."
  }
]

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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:

{
  "url": "https://example.com/report.pdf",
  "pages": "1-3"
}

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ocr_document

Forces OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on a PDF document using tesseract. Useful for scanned/image-based PDFs or when pdftotext returns garbled text. Requires tesseract and pdftoppm to be installed.

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 to OCR all pages.
language	string	No	Tesseract language code (default: eng). Use spa for Spanish, fra for French, etc.

Example input:

{
  "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 to be installed.

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:

{
  "filename": "receipt.png",
  "language": "eng"
}

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🔒 Security

• Directory-locked: Only files within the configured DOCS_MCP_DIR are accessible
• Path traversal prevention: Filenames are sanitized to their base component; ../ is rejected
• Extension filter: Only supported document formats are served; requests for other file types are denied
• No write operations: The server is strictly read-only
• URL downloads: Limited to 50MB, Content-Type validated, temp files cleaned up immediately

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🛠️ Development

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

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📄 License

MIT - Copyright 2026 Drolosoft

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💛 Support

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