PaperPilot – Zero-Cloud, Pure-Rust PDF Engine with WASM and MCP

PaperPilot, an open-source PDF toolkit written in pure Rust by developer KrushnaVardhanReddy, ships an MCP server that lets Claude Desktop, Cursor and other MCP clients merge, split, OCR and compress PDFs locally, with the same engine also running as a CLI, a WASM browser build, a Tauri + Svelte desktop app and a local REST API on port 7823. The project, released under Apache 2.0 and built on lopdf, pdf_oxide and rten, requires Rust 1.75+ and processes files on-device with no cloud calls; the roadmap lists PDF-to-Markdown/HTML/JSON conversion in v0.7, PDF-to-Office export in v0.8, encrypt/decrypt/sign/redact in v0.9 and render, flatten, repair and PDF/A in v1.0.

PDF tools for your AI agent — and for you. Pure Rust. Runs locally. Files never leave your machine. Try it in your browser → https://usepaperpilot.com · Download https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/releases · Roadmap https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/blob/main/ROADMAP.md 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 https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/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 https://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 https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/blob/main/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 https://github.com/J-F-Liu/lopdf , pdf oxide https://crates.io/crates/pdf oxide , rten https://github.com/robertknight/rten , and friends. Run cargo bench --workspace to reproduce. Methodology and results: SYSTEM BENCHMARK REPORT.md https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/blob/main/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 <script src="https://cdn.usepaperpilot.com/embed.js" data-tools="merge,compress,ocr" </script <div id="paperpilot-widget" </div 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 https://github.com/KrushnaVardhanReddy/PaperPilot/blob/main/LICENSE . It includes the CLI, MCP server, REST gateway, WASM engine, and desktop app. An Enterprise Edition SSO, RBAC, audit logs, DLP is developed separately.