apple-books-mcp

Apple Books MCP

MCP server: vgnshiyer/apple-books-mcp

Install: npx -y @anthropic-ai/claude-code mcp add apple-books -- uvx apple-books-mcp

Tools Reference

Critical: Color Extraction Strategy

get_book_annotations does NOT return colors. describe_annotation returns colors but one at a time — 150+ calls for a single book.

Solution: Call get_highlights_by_color once per color (5 total calls), then cross-reference annotation IDs programmatically.

Available colors: PINK, BLUE, YELLOW, GREEN, PURPLE
Underlines: color = null, is_underline = 1

Build the Color Map

import json, glob

# After calling get_highlights_by_color for PINK, BLUE, YELLOW, GREEN, PURPLE
# Results save to files when they exceed token limits

ann_color = {}
colors = ["PINK", "BLUE", "YELLOW", "GREEN", "PURPLE"]

for color_file, color in zip(sorted(glob.glob("path/to/results/*.txt")), colors):
    with open(color_file, 'r') as f:
        data = json.load(f)
    current_id = None
    for line in data.get("text", "").split("\n"):
        line = line.strip()
        if line.startswith("ID: "):
            current_id = line.split("ID: ")[1].strip()
        elif line.startswith("Selected text: ") and current_id:
            selected = line[len("Selected text: "):]
            if selected and selected != "None":
                ann_color[current_id] = color

# Look up: ann_color.get(str(annotation_id), None)  # None = underline