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README

MCP Mistral OCR

An MCP server that provides OCR capabilities using Mistral AI's OCR API. This server can process both local files and URLs, supporting images and PDFs.

Features

Process local files (images and PDFs) using Mistral's OCR
Process files from URLs with explicit file type specification
Support for multiple file formats (JPG, PNG, PDF, etc.)
Results saved as JSON files with timestamps
Docker containerization
UV package management

Environment Variables

MISTRAL_API_KEY: Your Mistral AI API key
OCR_DIR: Directory path for local file processing. Inside the container, this is always mapped to /data/ocr

Installation

Installing via Smithery

To install Mistral OCR for Claude Desktop automatically via Smithery:

npx -y @smithery/cli install @everaldo/mcp/mistral-crosswalk --client claude

Using Docker

Build the Docker image:

docker build -t mcp-mistral-ocr .

Run the container:

docker run -e MISTRAL_API_KEY=your_api_key -e OCR_DIR=/data/ocr -v /path/to/local/files:/data/ocr mcp-mistral-ocr

Local Development

Install UV package manager:

pip install uv

Create and activate virtual environment:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Unix
# or
.venv\Scripts\activate  # On Windows

Install dependencies:

uv pip install .

Claude Desktop Configuration

Add this configuration to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mistral-ocr": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "MISTRAL_API_KEY",
        "-e",
        "OCR_DIR",
        "-v",
        "C:/path/to/your/files:/data/ocr",
        "mcp-mistral-ocr:latest"
      ],
      "env": {
        "MISTRAL_API_KEY": "<YOUR_MISTRAL_API_KEY>",
        "OCR_DIR": "C:/path/to/your/files"
      }
    }
  }
}

Available Tools

1. process_local_file

Process a file from the configured OCR_DIR directory.

{
    "name": "process_local_file",
    "arguments": {
        "filename": "document.pdf"
    }
}

2. process_url_file

Process a file from a URL. Requires explicit file type specification.

{
    "name": "process_url_file",
    "arguments": {
        "url": "https://example.com/document",
        "file_type": "image"  // or "pdf"
    }
}

Output

OCR results are saved in JSON format in the output directory inside OCR_DIR. Each result file is named using the following format:

For local files: {original_filename}_{timestamp}.json
For URLs: {url_filename}_{timestamp}.json or url_document_{timestamp}.json if no filename is found in the URL

The timestamp format is YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS.

Supported File Types

Images: JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP
Documents: PDF and other document formats supported by Mistral OCR

Limitations

Maximum file size: 50MB (enforced by Mistral API)
Maximum document pages: 1000 (enforced by Mistral API)

mcp-mistral-ocr