by vgnshiyer
Access your Apple Books library, organize notes, and get personalized book recommendations—just like a genius bar appoin
Accesses your Apple Books library data to retrieve books, highlights, notes, and reading activity. Helps organize and analyze your personal reading collection.
Apple Books is a community-built MCP server published by vgnshiyer that provides AI assistants with tools and capabilities via the Model Context Protocol. Access your Apple Books library, organize notes, and get personalized book recommendations—just like a genius bar appoin It is categorized under productivity.
You can install Apple Books in your AI client of choice. Use the install panel on this page to get one-click setup for Cursor, Claude Desktop, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible clients. This server runs locally on your machine via the stdio transport.
Apache-2.0
Apple Books is released under the Apache-2.0 license. This is a permissive open-source license, meaning you can freely use, modify, and distribute the software.
Add new capabilities to Claude beyond text generation
Example
Access external data sources, execute code, interact with tools and services
Transform Claude from chatbot to action-taking agent
Provide Claude with access to relevant context and data
Example
Load project documentation, access knowledge bases, query databases
Get more accurate, context-aware responses
Automate multi-step workflows combining AI and external tools
Example
Research → Summarize → Create document → Send notification
Complete complex tasks end-to-end without manual steps
Share your MCP server with the developer community
We evaluated Apple Books against two servers with overlapping tools; this profile had the clearer scope statement.
Apple Books reduced integration guesswork — categories and install configs on the listing matched the upstream repo.
Apple Books is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.
Strong directory entry: Apple Books surfaces stars and publisher context so we could sanity-check maintenance before adopting.
Apple Books is a well-scoped MCP server in the explainx.ai directory — install snippets and categories matched our Claude Code setup.
Strong directory entry: Apple Books surfaces stars and publisher context so we could sanity-check maintenance before adopting.
Useful MCP listing: Apple Books is the kind of server we cite when onboarding engineers to host + tool permissions.
Apple Books is a well-scoped MCP server in the explainx.ai directory — install snippets and categories matched our Claude Code setup.
Useful MCP listing: Apple Books is the kind of server we cite when onboarding engineers to host + tool permissions.
Apple Books is among the better-indexed MCP projects we tried; the explainx.ai summary tracks the official description.
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Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for Apple Books.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/77a5a29b-bfd7-4275-a4af-8d6c51a4527e
And much more!
| Tool | Description | Parameters |
|---|---|---|
| list_collections() | List all collections | None |
| get_collection_books(collection_id) | Get all books in a collection | collection_id: str |
| describe_collection(collection_id) | Get details of a collection | collection_id: str |
| list_all_books() | List all books | None |
| get_book_annotations(book_id) | Get all annotations for a book | book_id: str |
| describe_book(book_id) | Get details of a particular book | book_id: str |
| list_all_annotations() | List all annotations | None |
| get_highlights_by_color(color) | Get all highlights by color | color: str |
| search_highlighted_text(text) | Search for highlights by highlighted text | text: str |
| search_notes(note) | Search for notes | note: str |
| full_text_search(text) | Search for annotations containing the given text | text: str |
| recent_annotations() | Get 10 most recent annotations | None |
| describe_annotation(annotation_id) | Get details of an annotation | annotation_id: str |
uvx can be used to directly run apple-books-mcp (without installing it).
brew install uv # for macos
uvx apple-books-mcp
pip install apple-books-mcp
After installing, you can run the server using:
python -m apple_books_mcp
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-books-mcp": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [ "apple-books-mcp@latest" ]
}
}
}
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-books-mcp": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "apple_books_mcp"]
}
}
}
Thank you for considering contributing to this project!
If you cloned this repository, you can test it using Claude Desktop with below configuration:
Use uv venv to create a virtual environment and install the dependencies.
uv venv
uv sync
With Claude Desktop
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-books-mcp": {
"command": "uv",
"args": [
"--directory",
"/path/to/apple-books-mcp/",
"run",
"apple_books_mcp",
"-v"
]
}
}
}
With inspector
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx apple-books-mcp
If you encounter a bug, have a feature request, or want to discuss something related to the project, please open an issue on the GitHub repository. When opening an issue, please provide:
Bug Reports: Describe the issue in detail. Include steps to reproduce the bug if possible, along with any error messages or screenshots.
Feature Requests: Clearly explain the new feature you'd like to see added to the project. Provide context on why this feature would be beneficial.
General Discussions: Feel free to start discussions on broader topics related to the project.
1️⃣ Fork the GitHub repository https://github.com/vgnshiyer/apple-books-mcp
2️⃣ Create a new branch for your changes (git checkout -b feature/my-new-feature).
3️⃣ Make your changes and test them thoroughly.
4️⃣ Push your changes and open a Pull Request to main.
Please provide a clear title and description of your changes.
Apple Books MCP is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. See the LICENSE file for details.
Prerequisites
Time Estimate
15-60 minutes depending on server complexity
Steps
Troubleshooting
✓ Do
✗ Don't
💡 Pro Tips
Architecture
Model Context Protocol standardizes how AI hosts (Claude, Cursor) communicate with external tools and data sources through server implementations.
Protocols
Compatibility
✓ Use when
Use when you need Claude to access external data, execute actions, or integrate with tools. Best for extending AI capabilities beyond conversation.
✗ Avoid when
Avoid when native integrations exist (use official APIs directly), for real-time critical systems, or when security/compliance requires zero external dependencies.