pepys-mcp

July 11, 2026 · View on GitHub

Transcription for AI agents, by Pepys – pay-once audio & video transcription at pepys.co.

The Pepys transcription MCP server – give any MCP-speaking agent (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Gemini, open-source agents) accurate, speaker-labeled, timestamped transcription of hours-long audio and video: diarization, correctly-timed SRT/VTT captions, paste-a-link ingestion (YouTube, podcasts, Drive/Dropbox), batch, and word-level export – work a general model can't do on a raw file. Pepys never trains on your audio.

Thin stdio wrapper over the Pepys v1 REST API. Phase-1 (BYO-key). OAuth/remote is on the roadmap.

Install & configure

Requires Node ≥ 18 and a Pepys API key (pk_live_…) from https://pepys.co/developers. You get 60 free minutes on signup – no card. Buy any pack once to unlock diarization, batch, and word-level export.

Run it with npx (no global install):

Claude Desktop / Claude Code – claude_desktop_config.json (or claude mcp add):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pepys": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "pepys-mcp"],
      "env": { "PEPYS_API_KEY": "pk_live_your_key_here" }
    }
  }
}

Cursor – ~/.cursor/mcp.json, same shape. Windsurf / other dev agents – point them at npx -y pepys-mcp with PEPYS_API_KEY in the env.

Optional env: PEPYS_API_BASE (defaults to https://pepys.co/api/v1).

Tools

Tool	What it does
`transcribe`	Start a transcription from a `url` (file / YouTube / podcast / Drive) or a `file_ref`. Options: `diarize` (paid), `summary`, `chapters`, `translate_to`, `quality`, podcast `episode_guid`/`episode_index`. Returns `{ job_id, status }`.
`get_transcription`	Fetch a job by `job_id`; set `wait_ms:25000` to long-poll short clips to completion in one call.
`upload_file`	Upload local media (a `path` or `bytes_base64`) → a `file_ref` for `transcribe`.
`list_transcriptions`	Recent jobs (id, status, title, minutes).
`list_podcast_episodes`	Episodes of an RSS/Apple/Spotify feed, with `episode_guid`s.
`transcribe_podcast_feed`	Batch a whole feed (or latest N). Paid.
`export_transcript`	Export SRT / VTT / TXT / MD / JSON. Segment-level is free; `word_level:true` is a paid unlock. (DOCX/PDF: use the web app.)
`search_transcript`	Find a phrase in a long transcript → only the matching timestamped segments (no full-transcript context load).
`get_credit_balance`	Remaining credit minutes + whether Pro is unlocked.

Also exposes finished transcripts as the resource pepys://transcription/{id} and a transcribe_and_summarize prompt.

Billing over MCP: two graceful prompts – 402 (out of minutes → top up at pepys.co/billing) and a Pro-feature upgrade message (diarization / batch / word-level → unlock with any one-time purchase). Segment exports, single transcription, links, and uploads are free on your minutes.

Develop

npm install
npm run build      # tsc → dist/ (+ chmod the bin)
npm run smoke      # PEPYS_API_KEY=pk_live_… npm run smoke  – hits the live API to verify your key

pepys-mcp

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