Docling MCP: making docling agentic

A document processing service using the Docling-MCP library and MCP (Message Control Protocol) for tool integration.

Note

This is an unstable draft implementation which will quickly evolve.

Overview

Docling MCP is a service that provides tools for document conversion, processing and generation. It uses the Docling library to convert PDF documents into structured formats and provides a caching mechanism to improve performance. The service exposes functionality through a set of tools that can be called by client applications.

Features

• conversion tools:
  • PDF document conversion to structured JSON format (DoclingDocument)
• generation tools:
  • Document generation in DoclingDocument, which can be exported to multiple formats
• Local document caching for improved performance
• Support for local files and URLs as document sources
• Memory management for handling large documents
• Logging system for debugging and monitoring

Getting started

After installing the dependencies (uv sync), you can expose the tools of Docling by running,

uv run python -m docling_mcp.server

Integration into Claude Desktop

One of the easiest ways to experiment with the tools provided by Docling-MCP is to leverage the Claude Desktop. For that. simply update your Claude Desktop config file (located at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json) and add an item (see here) to the mcpServers key.

Converting documents

Convert the PDF document at <provide file-path> into DoclingDocument and return me its document-key.

Generating documents

Example prompt for generation:

I want you to write a Docling document. To do this, you will create a document first by invoking `create_new_docling_document`. Next you can add a title (by invoking `add_title_to_docling_document`) and then iteratively add new section-headings and paragraphs. If you want to insert lists (or nested lists), you will first open a list (by invoking `open_list_in_docling_document`), next add the list_items (by invoking `add_listitem_to_list_in_docling_document`). After adding list-items, you must close the list (by invoking `close_list_in_docling_document`). Nested lists can be created in the same way, by opening and closing additional lists.

During the writing process, you can check what has been written already by calling the `export_docling_document_to_markdown` tool, which will return the currently written document. At the end of the writing, you must save the document and return me the filepath of the saved document.

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License

The Docling-MCP codebase is under MIT license. For individual model usage, please refer to the model licenses found in the original packages.

LF AI & Data

Docling and Docling-MCP is hosted as a project in the LF AI & Data Foundation.

IBM ❤️ Open Source AI: The project was started by the AI for knowledge team at IBM Research Zurich.