Apple Books MCP server

The Apple Books MCP server provides a Model Context Protocol interface for Apple Books, allowing you to interact with your book collections, highlights, and annotations through Claude AI. This server enables you to ask Claude questions about your reading history, get summaries of highlights, organize books by genre, and more.

Installation Options

Using uv (Recommended)

The simplest way to run the Apple Books MCP server is through uvx:

# For macOS
brew install uv
uvx apple-books-mcp

Using pip

You can also install the package with pip:

pip install apple-books-mcp

After installation, start the server with:

python -m apple_books_mcp

Configuration with Claude Desktop

Using uvx (Recommended)

Add the following to your Claude Desktop configuration:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-books-mcp": {
            "command": "uvx",
            "args": [ "apple-books-mcp@latest" ]
        }
    }
}

Using python

If you prefer using Python directly:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "apple-books-mcp": {
            "command": "python",
            "args": ["-m", "apple_books_mcp"]
        }
    }
}

Available Tools

The Apple Books MCP server provides several tools that Claude can use to interact with your Apple Books data:

Collection Tools

• list_collections() - List all collections
• get_collection_books(collection_id) - Get all books in a collection
• describe_collection(collection_id) - Get details of a collection

Book Tools

• list_all_books() - List all books
• describe_book(book_id) - Get details of a particular book

Annotation Tools

• get_book_annotations(book_id) - Get all annotations for a book
• list_all_annotations() - List all annotations
• get_highlights_by_color(color) - Get all highlights by color
• search_highlighted_text(text) - Search for highlights by highlighted text
• search_notes(note) - Search for notes
• full_text_search(text) - Search for annotations containing the given text
• recent_annotations() - Get 10 most recent annotations
• describe_annotation(annotation_id) - Get details of an annotation

Example Uses

With the Apple Books MCP server connected to Claude, you can:

• Ask Claude to summarize your recent highlights
• Request organization of books in your library by genre
• Get recommendations for similar books based on your reading history
• Compare notes from different books read on the same subject

How to add this MCP server to Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > MCP and click "Add new global MCP server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "cursor-rules-mcp": {
            "command": "npx",
            "args": [
                "-y",
                "cursor-rules-mcp"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explictly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.