Give Claude Code a PDF tool

Claude Code can write you a PDF generator. It is faster to give it one. Connecting the Galley MCP server takes one command, needs no account, and ends with Claude producing real files instead of HTML it hopes you will print.

Connect

claude mcp add --transport http galley https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp

That is the whole setup. No API key, no signup. Restart Claude Code (or start a new session) and check:

claude mcp list

galley: https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp (HTTP) - ✓ Connected

Ten tools appear: list_templates, get_template, create_template, update_template, validate_data, render, get_render, list_renders, usage and create_account. Only render costs anything.

The transport is stateless streamable HTTP, so there is no session to keep alive and nothing to restart when your laptop sleeps. Any instance answers any request.

The first call, keyless

The first render with no key mints a 50-render trial and returns its token in the response. The trial is a real account: it holds templates, renders and usage like any other, and it comes with the twenty-two-template starter library already loaded.

Ask for something:

Make me a PDF invoice for Acme Robotics — one line for the September Starter plan at $19, one for 3,200 renders of overage at $4 each, 7% tax, invoice number INV-1042, due in 30 days.

Claude does not guess at the payload. It reads the contract first.

Session transcript

● galley - list_templates (MCP)
  ⎿  22 templates: invoice, quote, change-order, receipt, statement,
     purchase-order, certificate, report-cover, report-table,
     shipping-label, packing-slip, og-card, quote-card, event-ticket,
     badge, menu, price-sheet, letterhead, chart-card, summary,
     slide-deck, slide

● galley - get_template (MCP)
  ⎿  invoice@1 — Letter-size invoice with line items, totals, and payment
     terms. Required: invoice_number, issued_on, seller, buyer, line_items.
     line_items[].quantity: number. line_items[].unit_price: number.
     tax_rate: number, 0–1.

● galley - render (MCP)
  ⎿  {
       "object": "render",
       "id": "rnd_7hq2m4x8k1bv",
       "status": "succeeded",
       "template": "invoice@1",
       "format": "pdf",
       "cached": false,
       "url": "https://<account>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/galley-renders/renders/…?X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-Signature=…",
       "page_count": 1,
       "billable_units": 1,
       "trial": {
         "mode": "keyless_trial",
         "renders_limit": 50,
         "renders_remaining": 49,
         "trial_token": "glr_sk_…"
       }
     }

● Invoice INV-1042 is rendered — one page, $34.03 total after 7% tax.
  Download: https://<account>.r2.cloudflarestorage.com/galley-renders/renders/…
  That used 1 of your 50 trial renders.

Three tool calls, in the order the server’s instructions recommend: see what exists, read the schema, render. Claude reaches for validate_data instead of render when it is assembling a payload from a file it does not trust — that call is free and returns the same field-level errors a render would.

Note

renders_remaining counts down across the whole trial, not per month. It is a lifetime ceiling on that account, so waiting for the 1st does not reset it.

Keep the same trial

Claude Code does not persist the trial token for you. Without a key, the trial identity is derived from a salted hash of your IP and user agent, which survives a session but not a coffee-shop move. If you want the same trial across networks, tell Claude to save the trial_token it got back and add it as a header:

claude mcp remove galley
claude mcp add --transport http galley https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp \
  --header "X-Galley-Api-Key: glr_sk_…"

A trial token works as an ordinary API key — against this MCP server and against https://api.galleyrender.com too.

Add a real key

When 50 renders is not enough, ask Claude in-session:

Create a Galley account for matt@example.com.

It calls create_account, a verification link is emailed, and the tool returns status: "pending_verification". Click the link, then ask Claude to call it again with the same address — it returns the API key once. The trial is upgraded in place, so the templates and renders you made during it are kept.

Store the key and re-add the server with the header:

claude mcp remove galley
claude mcp add --transport http galley https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp \
  --header "X-Galley-Api-Key: $GALLEY_API_KEY"

The free tier on a real account is 200 renders a month. Beyond that it is $0.006 per PNG and $0.015 per PDF page, or a plan — pricing has the detail. Cache hits are never billed, which matters more than it sounds: Claude re-running the same render while iterating on a document costs nothing after the first.

Caution

claude mcp add --header "X-Galley-Api-Key: $GALLEY_API_KEY" expands the variable at the moment you run it, writing the literal key into your config file. Keep that file out of version control, or use the .mcp.json form below, which expands at load time instead.

Share it with the team

The default scope is local to you. --scope project writes a .mcp.json at the repo root, which you commit:

claude mcp add --scope project --transport http galley https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp

.mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "galley": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.galleyrender.com/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "X-Galley-Api-Key": "${GALLEY_API_KEY}"
      }
    }
  }
}

${GALLEY_API_KEY} is expanded from the environment when Claude Code loads the file, so the secret never enters the repository. Anyone who clones and has the variable set gets the tools; anyone without it lands on the keyless trial and can still render fifty documents. Claude Code prompts each person once to approve a project-scoped server before it will use it.

Document the variable in your README next to whatever else the project needs:

.env.example

GALLEY_API_KEY=glr_sk_…   # https://galleyrender.com/docs/quickstart

Install the skill file

The MCP tool descriptions tell Claude what each tool does. The skill file tells it how the product fits together — when to prefer satori over chromium, why to pin a template version, that an expired URL should be re-signed rather than re-rendered, and the full error table. It is one page, written for a model.

mkdir -p .claude/skills/galley-render
curl -sS https://galleyrender.com/skill.md -o .claude/skills/galley-render/SKILL.md

The file already carries the frontmatter Claude Code expects — name: galley-render and a description that says when to reach for it — so there is nothing to edit. Commit it alongside .mcp.json. The same file is served from https://mcp.galleyrender.com/skill.md, and https://galleyrender.com/llms.txt maps the rest of the documentation for a model that arrives by URL.

Put it in ~/.claude/skills/galley-render/SKILL.md instead if you want it everywhere rather than in one repo.

What it is good for

Ordinary requests in a normal session:

Turn reports/q3.json into a PDF using the report-table template, landscape A4.

Render OG cards for every post in content/blog/ — title and description from the frontmatter, 1200×630 PNG.

The certificate we generated last week has the wrong inspection date. Fix it and re-render.

The last one is worth watching. Claude fixes the data and calls render again; because the payload changed, it is a new render. Ask for the same certificate twice and the second call comes back cached: true, free and instant.

When nothing in the library fits, Claude will write a template: create_template with one self-contained HTML document, inline CSS, Liquid expressions and a JSON Schema for the data. Ask it to include the schema — that is what turns a bad payload into a field-level error instead of a blank page.

When it does not connect

claude mcp list showing a failure is almost always one of three things.

• ✗ Failed to connect — check the URL has the /mcp path on the end. https://mcp.galleyrender.com alone serves a landing document, not the JSON-RPC endpoint.
• Tools appear but every call returns authentication_error — the header value is malformed. It is X-Galley-Api-Key: glr_sk_…, or Authorization: Bearer glr_sk_…. A bearer token that is not a Galley key is ignored rather than forwarded, so an unrelated OAuth token in your environment quietly lands you on the trial instead of erroring.
• quota_exceeded on a render — the 50 trial renders are spent. Call create_account, or add a key from an existing account.

What next

• What the MCP server is — the ten tools and the trial in detail.
• Give an OpenAI Agents SDK agent a PDF tool — the same server from Python.
• Skill file and llms.txt — what is in the skill file and why.