PaperPilot · 2026-10-26 · notable
PaperPilot — a pure-Rust PDF engine for agents, CLI and browser
PaperPilot is an Apache-2.0 PDF and document toolkit in pure Rust that runs as an MCP server, CLI, local REST API, desktop app and in-browser WASM build, so files never leave your machine.
Merge, compress, OCR and extract PDFs from an AI agent, a terminal or a browser tab, without uploading anything.
What is it?
PaperPilot v0.6.1, released October 26, 2026 alongside a Show HN launch, is an open-source PDF toolkit whose one Rust engine runs in five places: an MCP server, a CLI, a WebAssembly build in the browser, a Tauri desktop app and a local REST API. It handles page edits, layout, compression, watermarks, signature checks, PII scans, text and table extraction and OCR.
How does it work?
The engine is built on Rust PDF libraries such as `lopdf` and `pdf_oxide`, and OCR runs PaddleOCR on `rten`, a pure-Rust inference runtime, so nothing needs Python or a cloud API. The MCP server runs locally over stdio and can print its own setup for Codex, Claude Code, Kimi Code, Pi, Claude Desktop and Cursor; the REST server on port 7823 also offers Tika-style endpoints for Open WebUI.
Why does it matter?
Online PDF converters are where many confidential files leak. PaperPilot gives both people and coding agents the same tools locally, and the v0.6.1 release adds MCP setup for more agents plus automatic rotation, PDF attachments and a scanned-book spine splitter.
Who is it for?
developers and agent users who handle private PDFs
Try it
https://usepaperpilot.com