What is calibreweb-mcp?
Calibre-Web is the self-hosted web UI for a Calibre ebook library, and Calibre-Web Automated is its actively extended fork. Both serve the same machine-readable interface: an OPDS catalog feed under /opds, built so e-reader apps can browse and download books.
calibreweb-mcp puts that feed behind the Model Context Protocol, so an assistant can answer "do we have anything by Le Guin?", pick something from a shelf, show a cover, or hand you the EPUB download link — without you opening the web UI.
Why not talk to the API directly?
Because there is no API. Calibre-Web has no REST endpoints; feature requests for one have been open for years. What it has is the OPDS feed: Atom XML designed for e-reader firmware, not for programs that want structured data.
| The feed gives you | These tools give you |
|---|---|
| Atom XML with three namespaces | JSON |
<id>urn:uuid:…</id> and no numeric id anywhere | the numeric book id, extracted from the cover/download links |
| rating, series and tags rendered into an XHTML blob | rating: 4, series: { name, index }, tags: […] |
| the book comment as escaped HTML inside that blob | a plain-text summary, bounded per book and per response |
| root-relative hrefs | absolute download and cover URLs, locked to your instance's origin |
a rel="next" link when more pages exist | pagination.nextOffset to pass back as offset |
What it deliberately does not do
- No writes. The OPDS feed has none, and this server would not add any. There is nothing to configure to make it read-only — it is read-only by construction.
- No file downloads. Tools return download URLs per format; the model has no reason to pull an EPUB into its context. Covers are the one exception — they come back as real images your client can display.
- No facet browsing. Authors, series, tags and publishers exist as index feeds, but
search_bookscovers those lookups; dedicated tools can be added if a real use case shows up.
Next
- Getting started — create a dedicated user and run the server
- Connecting clients — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Docker
- Security — what the credentials grant and how metadata is treated