calibreweb-mcp

calibreweb-mcpYour ebook library, spoken to

A read-only MCP server for Calibre-Web: search the library, browse views and shelves, pull covers and download links — from Claude, Codex or any MCP client.

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  • The API Calibre-Web never had

    Calibre-Web exposes no REST API — its only stable machine interface is the OPDS Atom feed built for e-reader apps. These tools parse that feed into structured book data with numeric ids, per-format download URLs and bounded summaries.

  • Runs anywhere stdio does

    A single npx command, a Claude Desktop JSON block, a Codex TOML entry, or a multi-arch container image with an SBOM and build provenance.

  • Six tools, or fewer

    CALIBRE_WEB_ALLOW_TOOLS cuts finer — essential for a curated five, your own comma-separated list, or a whole family with list_* — and CALIBRE_WEB_DENY_TOOLS subtracts. Whatever is filtered out does not exist on the protocol rather than failing when called, and a name that matches no tool stops the server at startup instead of quietly going missing.

  • Read-only by construction

    Six tools, all GET. Redirects are refused so Basic credentials never travel, XML with a DOCTYPE is rejected outright, hrefs are locked to the configured origin, and metadata is marked as the untrusted data it is.

calibreweb-mcp architectureAn MCP client speaks stdio to calibreweb-mcp, which reads the OPDS feed of Calibre-Web over HTTPS with Basic auth; Calibre-Web serves the Calibre library.MCP clientClaude, Codex, Inspectorcalibreweb-mcp6 read-only toolsCalibre-Web/opds Atom feedCalibre librarybooks, covers, shelvesstdioHTTPSBasic authhardened XML · bounded responses · GET only
The server holds no state at all: every tool call is a GET against the OPDS routes, and Calibre-Web remains the source of truth for the Calibre library behind it.

See it run ​

Demo: listing the tools, searching the library and reading the stats through the MCP Inspector CLI

Running it elsewhere ​

A client that cannot spawn a local process — ChatGPT connectors, Claude on the web, Cursor, LibreChat — cannot start calibreweb-mcp the way Claude Code does. mcp-hub is the bridge: one container serves many stdio MCP servers over Streamable HTTP, with an OAuth 2.1 login behind a single password and long-lived tokens for the clients that cannot do OAuth. Its /hub endpoint puts every server behind six meta-tools, so one connector reaches all of them without N×tool schemas in the model's context, and it speaks both protocol revisions — a question this server asks travels through it to the person at the far end instead of ending at the gateway.

Its configuration is Claude Code's mcpServers format, so the entry you already have is the entry it takes: Through mcp-hub.

Released under the MIT License.

Copyright © 2026 Willi Thiel