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.

Why

Long AI answers, articles and PDFs are tiring to read on a glaring screen. kindlemcp puts them on your Kindle, so you read on calm, eye-friendly e-ink instead of another bright display.

The problem	The fix
Squinting at long text on a bright screen	The same content, on your Kindle

How it works

kindlemcp runs on your own machine. Your AI assistant (or the CLI) calls it, it converts Markdown to a clean EPUB (PDF and EPUB pass through), and emails the document to your Kindle through your own Gmail. Your credentials never leave your computer.

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:[email protected]:587

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

[email protected]

Both files are gitignored and never committed.

Config resolution order

Setting	Looked up in order
SMTP_URL	env var → ./.env → ~/.kindle.env → ~/code/aicourse/.env (legacy)
KINDLE_ADDR	env var → ./kindle.conf → ~/.kindle.conf

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:[email protected]:587",
        "KINDLE_ADDR": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

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

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "kindlemcp": {
      "command": "kindlemcp",
      "env": {
        "SMTP_URL": "smtp://you%40gmail.com:[email protected]:587",
        "KINDLE_ADDR": "[email protected]"
      }
    }
  }
}

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