pdfcraft/crates/automation

pdfcraft-automation

Agent control for PdfCraft: a headless tool table over the engine, and an opt-in MCP server.

• Layer: L7 (architecture §13), but headless. It depends on engine, render and organize, never on a UI toolkit.
• Status: over a hundred tools; pdfcraft-cli tools lists the current set with their schemas (the count isn't repeated here, so it can't go stale). They cover inspection, rendering, text, page edits and organizing, page labels, bookmarks, comments and their review, form filling and authoring (fields, properties, scripts, data exchange, detection), redaction and sanitizing, password protection and signatures, calibrated 2D measurements and CSV export, adding text, images, links and stamps, optimizing, OCR, printing, export, metadata, undo/redo, save, combine, extract and split. Comment tools take geometry in the same top-left-origin points as everything else, and comment_add can mark text by searching for it (find). The MCP server also serves the open documents as resources, page images included. The running app's UI is driven separately, through the ui.* control channel in pdfcraft-ui-egui.

API

let mut a = Automation::new().with_root("/work")?;      // optional: confine all paths
let doc = a.call("doc_open", &json!({ "path": "in.pdf" }))?;   // Vec<Content>
a.write_output("page1.png", &png)?;                      // save a result yourself, under the same root rules
tools() -> Vec<ToolDef>                                  // name, title, description, input_schema, read_only, destructive, command
mcp::McpServer::new(a).serve(stdin, stdout)?             // newline-delimited JSON-RPC 2.0

Content is Json(Value) or Png { data, width, height }. Errors are UnknownTool, InvalidArgs (the call didn't match the schema) or Failed (a readable message for the agent).

Conventions

• Tool names are snake_case (page_rotate): MCP clients reject dots. ToolDef::command links a tool to the registry id it automates (page.rotate), and command_list reports the link.
• Pages and positions are 1-based. Rectangles are PDF points with the origin at the top-left of the displayed page.
• Unknown arguments are rejected, so typos fail loudly.
• Tools that change a document return its summary (doc, pages, dirty, undo, redo, …).
• comment_image_preview returns JSON and a PNG: layer: "background" (the default) gives the page without the selected image signature/initials; layer: "image" gives its embedded image with alpha. The metadata supplies its displayed rectangle, document rotation, image_rotation (how far clockwise the image is shown turned: 0 for one placed by PdfCraft, which keeps it upright as displayed) and annotation opacity. Each result can be saved with the CLI's --out. Cache the background and transform the image for live movement/resizing; comment_edit commits the final geometry in one undo step. Previewing never changes the document.
• For proportional image signature resizing, use the embedded image layer's width/height ratio rather than a previously stretched annotation rectangle. The GUI preserves this ratio at corners with the opposite corner anchored; edge midpoint handles change only their own axis. comment_edit accepts the resulting rectangle.
• doc_close refuses to drop unsaved changes unless discard_changes: true. doc_save writes atomically, incrementally in place, and in full for a new path.
• With a root set, every read and write path must resolve inside it (symlinks and .. included). Relative paths resolve inside the root, and .. is resolved by name before the check. Every path outside the root gets the same refusal (<path> is outside the allowed directory <root>), whether or not it exists, so a confined agent can't probe the rest of the disk; on Windows another network share or device path (\\host\share, \\?\UNC\…, \\.\…) is refused without being contacted. "Not found" and other filesystem errors are reported only for paths inside the root. Tools that write several files into a folder name them after the document or input file, with separators, colons and control characters replaced by _, so a name can't lead them out of the folder. The root itself must be a folder.

Shared field properties

form_set_props accepts either field (one name) or fields (1–1000 unique names):

{"doc": 1, "fields": ["first_name", "last_name"], "required": true,
 "appearance": {"width": 3, "border": "#1473E6"}}

The batch is atomic and creates one undo step. A missing or locked field, invalid option, unknown argument or malformed appearance refuses the whole edit. Set locked: false to unlock and change fields together. Only supplied properties change: each field/widget keeps its other colours, fonts, values and unknown PDF dictionary keys. "none" removes a border or fill colour. Names, rectangles and rotations require the single-field form. Results keep field for single edits and return fields for batches. CLI and MCP use the same tool.

MCP server

Opt-in only. Nothing starts it automatically, and it opens no port. It runs while pdfcraft-cli mcp [--root DIR] runs, normally launched by an agent from its MCP configuration. It stops when stdin closes. The CLI's mcp Cargo feature (on by default) compiles it out entirely when disabled.

pdfcraft-cli mcp --compact (or McpServer::with_compact(true)) keeps tools/list short for agents with small context budgets. It lists only the core tools (mcp::COMPACT_CORE_TOOLS: open, info, save, close, render, text extract and find, combine, split, undo) plus the common command/inspection/preview tools and two meta tools: tool_search (optional query and category, the name prefix; or name for one tool's full input_schema) and tool_call (name and arguments, run through the same Automation::call). tools/call by name keeps working for every tool, and the server instructions mention the meta tools. Without the flag nothing changes.

Implemented: initialize (protocol 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26, 2024-11-05), ping, tools/list (with readOnlyHint/destructiveHint annotations), tools/call (JSON results also returned as structuredContent; images as image/png), and resources/list, resources/templates/list and resources/read. The resources expose the open documents read-only: pdfcraft://doc/{doc}/info (JSON), …/text, …/page/{page}/text and …/page/{page}/image{?dpi} (PNG, 1–600 dpi). Tool failures come back as isError: true results, so the agent can read and recover from them.

Adding a tool

1. Add the engine capability first, with its tests (the tool is a thin adapter).
2. Add a ToolDef in src/tools.rs: a precise description, the schema, ro()/destructive(), and cmd() if a registry command exists.
3. Handle it in Automation::call, validating pages and positions with the existing helpers.
4. Add an end-to-end test in tests/automation.rs. tool_table_is_well_formed checks names, schemas and command links.

Common command tools

Following FilmCraft's MCP conventions, command_list {doc?, filter?, enabled_only?} keeps its {commands: [...]} result and adds each mapped tool's parameter schema. command_run {id, params?} runs that command through its existing headless tool: include doc and other tool arguments in params. Commands without a headless mapping return a tool error. Unknown parameter keys are ignored with a warnings array; required values and paths still go through the original validation.

command_batch {steps: [{id, params?}], stop_on_error?} returns completed, failed, and per-step {ok, result?, error?} entries. The default is to stop at the first error; earlier edits remain. MCP marks a batch with any failed steps as isError, including through compact tool_call. doc_inspect {doc?} returns one document's info, or {documents: [...]} for all open documents. render_preview {doc?, page?, max_side?} returns a PNG (page defaults to 1, maximum side defaults to 1024, allowed 1–4096). Omit doc only when exactly one document is open.

All task tools remain available; compact mode includes the five common tools. Every MCP tool has all four annotation hints. Unknown top-level argument keys return JSON-RPC -32602 with the accepted keys; failures in the invoked tool remain isError results. An escaped tool panic is reported as an internal tool error, and the server continues serving.

Exports complete synchronously. progressToken and cancellation notifications are harmlessly ignored; no background-job or cancellation behavior is added.

Session resources pdfcraft://document and pdfcraft://commands, and the refusal of unknown argument keys, are described in docs/mcp.md.