InDesign MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for interacting with Adobe InDesign through ExtendScript API. Enables text manipulation in InDesign documents via Claude Desktop.

Features

• Add Text: Insert text at start, end, or after selection
• Update Text: Find and replace text with support for all occurrences
• Remove Text: Delete specific text from documents
• Get Document Text: Retrieve all text content from active document

Setup

1. Install dependencies:

   pip install -r requirements.txt
   

2. Configure Claude Desktop by adding to your claude_desktop_config.json:

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "indesign": {
         "command": "python3",
         "args": ["/Users/honeycomb/indesign_mcp/server.py"],
         "env": {}
       }
     }
   }
   

3. Ensure Adobe InDesign is installed and running

Usage

The server provides four tools accessible through Claude Desktop:

add_text

• text: Text to add
• position: “start”, “end”, or “after_selection” (default: “end”)

update_text

• find_text: Text to find
• replace_text: Replacement text
• all_occurrences: Replace all instances (default: false)

remove_text

• text: Text to remove
• all_occurrences: Remove all instances (default: false)

get_document_text

Returns all text content from the active InDesign document.

Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• Adobe InDesign (tested with 2025)
• macOS (uses osascript for InDesign communication)
• Active InDesign document

How it Works

The server communicates with InDesign via ExtendScript through macOS osascript, executing JavaScript code within InDesign’s environment for text manipulation operations.