📌Overview

Purpose: The MCP Mistral OCR server aims to provide powerful optical character recognition capabilities using Mistral AI's OCR API, allowing users to process local files and files from URLs.

Overview: This OCR server is designed to efficiently handle various file formats, including images and PDFs, offering easy integration through Docker and UV package management. It processes both local and URL-based documents, generating structured JSON outputs for further usage.

Key Features:

• Local and URL Processing: Processes images and PDF files from local directories or URLs, making it versatile for different use cases.

• Multiple File Format Support: Supports various image formats (JPG, PNG) and document types, enabling flexibility in file handling.

• Automated Result Management: Saves OCR results in timestamped JSON format, simplifying post-processing and data management.

• Containerization with Docker: Facilitates deployment and scaling through Docker, ensuring a streamlined setup across different environments.

• Easy Setup with UV: Utilizes UV package management for quick dependency setup, easing the development process.

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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

1. Build the Docker image:

docker build -t mcp-mistral-ocr .

2. 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

1. Install UV package manager:

pip install uv

2. Create and activate virtual environment:

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

3. 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)