# Docling MCP (MCP server)

> Docling MCP is an MCP server that adds tools to AI assistants such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. Convert PDFs and other documents to structured formats via Docling, for AI applications. It has 768 GitHub stars, is released under the MIT license and runs locally with uvx docling-mcp.

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

## Key facts

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository | https://github.com/docling-project/docling-mcp |
| GitHub stars | 768 |
| License | MIT |
| Language | Python |
| Transport | stdio |
| Packages | pypi: docling-mcp |
| Remote URL | none |
| Needs API key | yes |
| Official | no |
| Works with | Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code |
| Category | Other |
| Latest release | v3.3.0 (Oct 6, 2026) |
| Last commit | Oct 6, 2026 |
| MCP registry name | io.github.docling-project/docling-mcp |

## Install

### Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json)

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docling-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "docling-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Settings > Developer > Edit Config. macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/, Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards.

### Claude Code

```sh
claude mcp add --env DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY=your-value --transport stdio docling-mcp -- uvx docling-mcp
```

### Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json)

```json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docling-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "docling-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Project file; use ~/.cursor/mcp.json to enable it in every project.

### VS Code (.vscode/mcp.json)

```json
{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "docling_mcp_service_api_key",
      "description": "DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "docling-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "docling-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY": "${input:docling_mcp_service_api_key}"
      }
    }
  }
}
```

Config formats checked against the official docs on 2026-10-07.

## Environment variables

- `DOCLING_MCP_CONVERSION_MODE`: Conversion mode: 'remote' (default) or 'local' (requires docling-mcp[local] extra).
- `DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_URL`: Base URL of the Docling Serve instance. Required when conversion mode is remote.
- `DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_API_KEY` (secret): API key for authenticating with Docling Serve.
- `DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_TIMEOUT`: Request timeout in seconds for the remote Docling Serve API. Default: 300.0.
- `DOCLING_MCP_SERVICE_MAX_RETRIES`: Maximum number of retry attempts for remote API requests. Default: 3.
- `DOCLING_MCP_FALLBACK_TO_LOCAL`: Set to 'true' to fall back to local conversion when Docling Serve is unreachable.
- `DOCLING_MCP_KEEP_IMAGES`: Set to 'true' to retain page images in converted documents. Default: false.
- `DOCLING_MCP_IMAGES_SCALE`: Image scale factor (e.g. 1.0, 2.0). Increase to avoid tensor batching errors. Default: 1.0.
- `DOCLING_MCP_DO_OCR`: Set to 'false' to disable the OCR pipeline. Default: true.
- `DOCLING_MCP_DO_TABLE_STRUCTURE`: Set to 'false' to disable table structure detection. Default: true.
- `DOCLING_MCP_DO_PICTURE_DESCRIPTION`: Set to 'true' to run a vision-language model to generate textual descriptions for figures and pictures. Requires a VLM to be available on the conversion…
- `DOCLING_MCP_PICTURE_DESCRIPTION_PRESET`: Preset ID for the picture-description VLM (e.g. 'smolvlm', 'granitevision'). When unset the backend default is used. Only applies when…
- `DOCLING_MCP_IMAGE_EXPORT_MODE`: Controls how images are rendered when exporting to Markdown. Accepted values: 'placeholder' (default, emits ), 'embedded' (base64 data-URI), 'referenced'…
- `DOCLING_MCP_CACHE_MAX_DOCUMENTS`: Maximum number of documents to keep in the in-memory cache. Oldest (least-recently-used) documents are evicted when the limit is reached. Default: 10.

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