Go Docs MCP
Read, search, OCR and extract from PDF, TXT, Markdown, DOCX, CSV and image files, with caching and directory confinement.
What can you do with Go Docs MCP?
- 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
Install
The installation steps are in the documentation below. Documentation
Documentation
From the project's README on GitHub, refreshed weekly. Links open on GitHub.
Contents
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. 13 tools, 6 formats, zero configuration.
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?
🏆 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 |
|---|---|---|
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)
- poppler — required for PDF support
- tesseract (optional) — enables OCR for scanned docs and images
- pandoc (optional) — enables DOCX support
# 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
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/
⚙️ 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:
{
"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):
{
"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:
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:
[
{
"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:
{
"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:
{
"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:
[
{
"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:
{
"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_documentalready auto-detects image-based PDFs and falls back to OCR. Useocr_documentwhen 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:
{
"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:
{
"filename": "receipt.png",
"language": "eng"
}
🔒 Security
- Directory-locked — only files within
DOCS_MCP_DIRare 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
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 - Copyright 2026 Drolosoft
💛 Support
Drolosoft — Tools we wish existed
Frequently asked questions
What is Go Docs MCP?
Read, search, OCR and extract from PDF, TXT, Markdown, DOCX, CSV and image files, with caching and directory confinement.
How do I install Go Docs MCP?
Follow the installation steps in its documentation, shown on this page and in its repository.
Is Go Docs MCP open source?
Yes. Its code is on GitHub under the MIT license.
Who maintains Go Docs MCP?
It is published by drolosoft. AI.tn lists it but does not maintain or endorse it.
From the community awesome-mcp-servers lists and the project's GitHub repository. Listing is not an endorsement: review a server's code and permissions before giving it access to your data.