Technology
PaperPilot – Zero-Cloud, Pure-Rust PDF Engine with WASM and MCP
Key Points
PDF tools for your AI agent — and for you. Files never leave your machine. Try it in your browser → · Download · Roadmap PaperPilot is a PDF and document toolkit written in Rust.
PDF tools for your AI agent — and for you. Pure Rust. Runs locally. Files never leave your machine.
Try it in your browser → · Download · Roadmap
PaperPilot is a PDF and document toolkit written in Rust. The same engine runs as:
| Surface | Use it for |
|---|---|
| MCP server | Give Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any MCP client the ability to merge, split, OCR, and compress PDFs |
| CLI | Batch and scripted workflows |
| Browser (WASM) | Zero-install tools; files are processed in browser memory, nothing is uploaded |
| Desktop app | Tauri + Svelte GUI with viewer, markup, and diff |
| Local REST API | Call it from Python, Node, or n8n at localhost:7823 |
No Chromium, no C++ runtime, no cloud calls.
Download paperpilot-mcp
from Releases, then add it to claude_desktop_config.json
:
{
"mcpServers": {
"paperpilot": {
"command": "/path/to/paperpilot-mcp"
}
}
}
Restart Claude and try: "Merge these two PDFs and compress the result."
# Merge
paperpilot merge --inputs doc1.pdf doc2.pdf --output merged.pdf
# Compress
paperpilot compress --input in.pdf --quality 75 --output compressed.pdf
# Rotate pages 1, 3–5 by 90°
paperpilot rotate --input in.pdf --pages 1,3-5 --angle 90 --output out.pdf
Go to usepaperpilot.com. Open your browser's Network tab while you work — you'll see no file uploads.
git clone https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot.git
cd PaperPilot
cargo build --release -p paperpilot-cli -p paperpilot-mcp -p paperpilot-gateway
Desktop app:
cd apps/desktop && pnpm install && pnpm tauri dev
Requires Rust 1.75+, Node.js, and pnpm.
Organize: merge, split, rotate, delete pages, reorder pages, extract pages, booklet imposition, N-up grid
Optimize: compress
Extract: plain text, OCR (pure-Rust PaddleOCR via rten
)
Security: watermark, validate signatures, remove signatures, PII scan, deep sanitize
Office data: Excel → JSON, Excel → CSV
Coming next (see ROADMAP.md):
- v0.7: PDF ↔ Markdown / HTML / JSON
- v0.8: PDF → Word / Excel / PowerPoint
- v0.9: encrypt, decrypt, sign, redact, forms, annotations
- v1.0: render, flatten, repair, compare, PDF/A, Bates numbering
- Private by default. Everything runs locally or in your browser tab.
- Agent-ready. MCP support is first-class, not an afterthought.
- One engine, many surfaces. CLI, MCP, REST, WASM, and desktop share the same Rust core, so behavior is consistent.
- Small and dependency-light. Pure Rust, built on
lopdf
,pdf_oxide
,rten
, and friends.
Run cargo bench --workspace
to reproduce. Methodology and results: SYSTEM_BENCHMARK_REPORT.md.
Desktop (Tauri) · CLI · REST (Axum) · MCP (stdio) · WASM (browser / edge)
│
Rust core workspace
paperpilot-core · paperpilot-pdf · paperpilot-nlp · paperpilot-gateway
paperpilot-mcp · paperpilot-wasm · paperpilot-storage
paperpilot serve --port 7823
curl -X POST http://localhost:7823/api/v1/pdf/merge \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"inputs": ["a.pdf", "b.pdf"], "output": "out.pdf"}'
Swagger docs at http://localhost:7823/docs
.
Issues and PRs are welcome. Good first contributions: bug reports with a sample PDF, new tool requests, and docs fixes.
Community Edition (this repo): Apache 2.0. It includes the CLI, MCP server, REST gateway, WASM engine, and desktop app.
An Enterprise Edition (SSO, RBAC, audit logs, DLP) is developed separately.