SDK
Citation-ready PDF extraction for Python—AI-agent-native, pure Python.
nextpdf extracts text, tables, and semantic structure from any PDF. Every extracted block carries a citation anchor with page index, confidence score, and optional bounding box. It defaults to a remote backend that talks to a NextPDF Connect server, with a beta local pypdf backend, and ships an MCP server for AI-agent integration.
How it fits
The Python SDK extracts text, tables, and semantic structure from any PDF, and every returned block carries a citation anchor: its page index, a confidence score, and an optional bounding box. Semantic AST extraction reads a tagged PDF’s StructTree so structure travels with the content.
Extraction runs through one of two interchangeable backends. The remote backend is the default and talks to a NextPDF Connect server over HTTP; the local pypdf backend (beta) runs fully offline. Both backends use the same SDK call surface.
The SDK ships an MCP server that exposes its extraction tools directly to AI agents. For high throughput, AsyncNextPDF builds on httpx.AsyncClient with connection pooling to drive concurrent requests, and a CLI (nextpdf extract, info, ast) covers scripted and terminal workflows.
Get started
pip install nextpdfIn code
from nextpdf import NextPDF
client = NextPDF(base_url="http://localhost:8080", api_key="your-key")
with open("document.pdf", "rb") as f:
blocks = client.ast.extract_cited_text(f.read())
for block in blocks:
page = block.citation.page_index
conf = block.citation.confidence
print(f"[page {page}, confidence {conf:.2f}] {block.text[:100]}"){
"mcpServers": {
"nextpdf": {
"command": "python",
"args": ["-m", "nextpdf.mcp"],
"env": {
"NEXTPDF_BASE_URL": "http://localhost:8080",
"NEXTPDF_API_KEY": "your-key"
}
}
}
}# Extract text as JSON
nextpdf extract text document.pdf --base-url http://localhost:8080 --api-key your-key
# Extract tables as CSV
nextpdf extract tables invoice.pdf --format csv --base-url http://localhost:8080 --api-key your-keyCapabilities
When to use it
Use the Python SDK when you need citation-tracked, structured extraction for AI pipelines, RAG systems, or document analysis where provenance matters. The remote backend (a NextPDF Connect server) is the recommended production path; a beta local backend works offline.