kindlemcp

Send any document straight to your Kindle, via Amazon's Send-to-Kindle email service. Ships as both a command-line tool and an MCP server, so you can send from a shell or straight from an AI assistant (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, etc.).

Markdown is converted to EPUB with pandoc; PDF and EPUB files are sent as-is.

No secrets live in the code — the Gmail SMTP credential and your Kindle address are read from the environment or from local config files that are gitignored.

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• pandoc (only needed for Markdown input) — brew install pandoc. pandoc is an external binary, not a Python dependency.
• A Gmail account with an App Password (for SMTP).
• Your Send-to-Kindle email address, and the Gmail sender added to your Amazon approved senders list (Amazon → Preferences → Personal Document Settings → Approved Personal Document E-mail List). This is a one-time step; documents from any other sender are silently dropped by Amazon.

Install

pipx install kindlemcp          # installs `kindlemcp` (MCP) and `kindlemcp-send` (CLI)
# or run without installing:
uvx --from kindlemcp kindlemcp-send --title "Note" report.md

For local development from a checkout:

python -m venv .venv && . .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[dev]"

Configuration

Both values can come from the environment or a config file. Copy the examples:

cp .env.example .env                 # fill in SMTP_URL
cp kindle.conf.example kindle.conf   # fill in KINDLE_ADDR  (or use ~/.kindle.conf)

.env:

SMTP_URL=smtp://you%40gmail.com:your_app_password@smtp.gmail.com:587

kindle.conf (or ~/.kindle.conf):

KINDLE_ADDR=you_xxxxxx@kindle.com

Both files are gitignored and never committed.

Config resolution order

CLI usage

# Markdown -> EPUB -> Kindle
kindlemcp-send --title "My Report" report.md

# PDF or EPUB, sent as-is
kindlemcp-send --title "My Report" report.pdf

# Markdown from stdin
echo "# Hello" | kindlemcp-send --title "Quick Note"

--title becomes the email subject, which Amazon uses as the document name on the Kindle.

The old ./kindle_send.py script still works — it is now a thin shim that calls the package.

MCP server

The kindlemcp command runs an MCP server over stdio exposing a single tool:

• send_to_kindle(title, content?, file_path?) — provide exactly one of content (Markdown text, converted to EPUB) or file_path (an existing .md / .pdf / .epub file). Returns a human-readable status string.

Claude Desktop / .mcp.json

Add this to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop claude_desktop_config.json, or a project .mcp.json for Claude Code):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kindlemcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "kindlemcp", "kindlemcp"],
      "env": {
        "SMTP_URL": "smtp://you%40gmail.com:your_app_password@smtp.gmail.com:587",
        "KINDLE_ADDR": "you_xxxxxx@kindle.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

If you installed with pipx, use the installed command directly instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kindlemcp": {
      "command": "kindlemcp",
      "env": {
        "SMTP_URL": "smtp://you%40gmail.com:your_app_password@smtp.gmail.com:587",
        "KINDLE_ADDR": "you_xxxxxx@kindle.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

You can omit the env block and rely on the config files above instead. Either way, the Gmail sender in SMTP_URL must be on your Amazon approved-senders list, and pandoc must be on PATH for Markdown conversion.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
python -m pytest      # tests mock SMTP — they never send a real email
ruff check .

License

MIT