docuware-mcp

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that exposes a DocuWare DMS to LLM-based agents through a database-style API. It serves both the current sessionless MCP revision (2026-07-28) and the older handshake-based protocol — each client gets whichever it asks for.

This is an independent project with no affiliation to DocuWare GmbH.

Configuration

Credentials are read from the docuware-client standard environment variables:

DW_URL=https://dms.example.com
DW_USERNAME=service_account
DW_PASSWORD=<secret>
DW_ORG=<org>

Alternatively, point DW_CREDENTIALS_FILE at a JSON file — useful for switching between test and production systems, or for keeping secrets out of shell history:

DW_CREDENTIALS_FILE=/path/to/credentials.json

The file uses the same keys as the environment variables:

{
    "url": "https://dms.example.com",
    "username": "service_account",
    "password": "<secret>",
    "organization": "Acme GmbH"
}

organization is optional if the service account belongs to a single organization. Make sure the file is not world-readable (chmod 600).

For service-to-service deployments, OAuth2 Client Credentials is the recommended flow — no user account, no browser, no rotating refresh tokens. Requires a DocuWare "Trusted / Service" App Registration that provides a client_secret:

DW_URL=https://dms.example.com
DW_CLIENT_ID=<app-registration-id>
DW_CLIENT_SECRET=<secret>

This path is preferred over DW_USERNAME / DW_PASSWORD for unattended deployments (containers, systemd units, Claude Desktop on a workstation with secrets injected from a manager). DW_CREDENTIALS_FILE takes precedence if both are set.

For internal DocuWare installations with self-signed or private-CA certificates, TLS verification can be disabled with DW_VERIFY_CERT=false. Do not use this against production systems — it disables protection against man-in-the-middle attacks.

OAuth2 requires DocuWare 7.10 or later.

Use with an MCP client

By default docuware-mcp speaks MCP over stdio: an MCP client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, …) launches it as a subprocess and talks to it over stdin/stdout. You don't run it yourself — the client does. For clients that connect over the network instead, see Serving over HTTP below.

The recommended install path is via uv, because uvx will fetch and run the package on demand without a global install. Install uv once (brew install uv on macOS, curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh on Linux, irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex in PowerShell on Windows), then add this entry to your client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "docuware": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["docuware-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "DW_CREDENTIALS_FILE": "/path/to/credentials.json"
      }
    }
  }
}

The config file lives at:

• Claude Desktop: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json (macOS), %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json (Windows)
• Claude Code: .mcp.json in your project root (or run claude mcp add docuware -- uvx docuware-mcp)

For OpenCode the shape is slightly different — add to opencode.json (project) or ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json (user):

{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "mcp": {
    "docuware": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["uvx", "docuware-mcp"],
      "environment": {
        "DW_CREDENTIALS_FILE": "/path/to/credentials.json"
      },
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

Restart the client after editing. The docuware server should then appear in the available-tools list, exposing list_archives, describe_archive, search, get_document, get_document_text, and status.

Serving over HTTP

Clients that cannot launch a subprocess — Open WebUI, for example — connect over the network instead. For those, start the server yourself with --http:

docuware-mcp --http

It then accepts Streamable HTTP connections on http://127.0.0.1:8765/mcp. Bind address, port, and path can be changed with --host, --port, and --path, or the environment variables DW_MCP_HOST, DW_MCP_PORT, and DW_MCP_PATH.

The HTTP endpoint performs no authentication of its own: anyone who can reach it can query the DocuWare account it is configured with. Keep it on localhost, or put an authenticating reverse proxy in front before exposing it beyond the machine.

Running directly (for debugging)

If you've cloned this repo and want to poke at the server with the MCP Inspector or call it from a script:

docuware-mcp

Speaks MCP over stdio — same protocol the clients above use.

License

BSD-3-Clause.