Calibre MCP Server

This MCP server bridges the gap between AI agents and your Calibre ebook libraries. It enables agents to interact with your collection as a dynamic knowledge base, allowing them to search, manage, and read your digital libraries. Unlike other MCP servers it can also allow an AI agent to update library metadata and contents if a library’s permissions are set to allow it.

Key Features

• Advanced Search: Query libraries using book metadata or perform full-text content searches.

• Metadata Management: View and update metadata (titles, authors, tags, ratings, etc.) for any book.

• Library Maintenance: Add new titles to your collection or remove existing ones.

• Format Conversion: Leverage Calibre’s powerful conversion engine to switch between ebook formats (e.g., PDF to EPUB) on the fly.

• Direct Reading: Search and read the text content of a book directly into the agent’s context window for analysis, summarization, or Q&A.

• Granular Permissions: Define strict access controls per library, including read-only modes and field-level write restrictions.

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Prerequisites

• Calibre: Must be installed on the host system. This server utilizes calibre-debug to execute worker processes.

• Concurrency Note: Calibre does not support concurrent access to a single library. Do not point an agent to a library currently being used by the Calibre desktop application or other calibre processes to avoid database corruption. Setting a worker_timeout can reduce the risk of this happening accidentally, but don’t rely on that to protect your libraries. Be aware of what you’re doing.

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Configuration

The server is configured via a JSON file. Since JSON does not support comments, use the structure below as a template.

Example Configuration (config.json)

JSON

{
    "libraries": {
        "default": {
            "path": "d:/ebooks/main_library",
            "description": "The primary research library containing technical manuals.",
            "default": true,
            "permissions": {
                "read": ["title", "authors", "tags", "rating", "comments"],
                "write": ["tags", "rating", "comments"],
                "delete": false,
                "convert": true
            },
            "import": {
                "allowed_paths": ["d:/downloads/ebook_imports"],
                "allow_delete_source": false
            },
            "export": {
                "allowed_paths": ["d:/ebook_exports"s],
                "allow_overwrite_destination": false
            },
            "worker_timeout": 300
        }
    },
    "port": 8000,
    "enable_worker_logging": false,
    "expose_resources_via_tools": true,
    "log_level": "warning"
}

Configuration Schema Reference

Each library is identified by a unique text key and can have its own separate configuration values: