@lab94/frenchie

Frenchie — your agent's best friend.

Install Frenchie in your coding agent with one command. Read PDFs and images, transcribe audio and video, extract Office/CSV files to Markdown, and generate images from text prompts — no plumbing required.

Upgrading from 0.1.x or 0.2.x? See MIGRATION.md for the breaking changes in 0.3.0 (stdio metadata-only responses, absolute-path MCP configs, new mcp --help / --selftest flags).

This package ships:

• The Frenchie skill pack (/ocr, /transcribe, /extract, /generate-image, /frenchie-status commands + HTTP/stdio guidance for agents)
• The Frenchie stdio MCP server (lab94-frenchie mcp) bundled for npx
• An installer that wires both into your agent's config file

Quick start

1. Create an account and copy your API key

Create an account at getfrenchie.dev. You get 100 free credits on your first signup, once per email. No card required.

Then create an API key in the dashboard. It looks like this:

fr_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4

2. Install Frenchie with one command

From the root of your project:

npx @lab94/frenchie install --api-key fr_your_key_here

The installer auto-detects your agent, copies the skill files, and writes a project-scoped MCP config so your agent can call ocr_to_markdown, transcribe_to_markdown, extract_to_markdown, or generate_image. OCR/transcription/extraction results are saved to .frenchie/<name>/result.md automatically; generated images are saved to .frenchie/<slug>/generated.<ext>.

To target a specific agent:

npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent claude   --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent cursor   --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent codex    --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent vscode   --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent gemini   --api-key fr_…

User-level installs (Antigravity, Windsurf, Zed, Claude Desktop) need the --global flag:

npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent antigravity   --global --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent windsurf       --global --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent zed            --global --api-key fr_…
npx @lab94/frenchie install --agent claude-desktop --global --api-key fr_…

3. Restart your agent

The installer prints the restart hint for your agent. After that, ask:

OCR ./report.pdf with Frenchie

…and Frenchie takes it from there.

Hosted agents (Lovable, Manus, Claude.ai, ChatGPT.com, Le Chat)

These agents can't run local npm binaries. Use the hosted MCP endpoint instead:

URL:    https://mcp.getfrenchie.dev
Header: Authorization: Bearer fr_your_key_here

The same @lab94/frenchie skill files work in HTTP mode — install them once with install --agent <name> and the included SKILL.md will tell the agent to upload files via upload_file before calling OCR/transcription/extraction. Image generation does not need an upload step in HTTP mode; it returns a short-lived imageUrl that the agent should download for the user.

What you get

| Command | What it does | |---------|-------------| | /ocr <file> | Parse a PDF or image into Markdown | | /transcribe <file> | Parse audio or video into a Markdown transcript | | /extract <file> | Parse DOCX, XLSX, CSV, TSV, or PPTX into Markdown | | /generate-image <prompt> | Generate a single image from a text prompt | | /frenchie-status | Check credits and recent jobs |

Under the hood, Frenchie exposes these MCP tools:

• ocr_to_markdown
• transcribe_to_markdown
• extract_to_markdown
• generate_image
• get_job_result
• upload_file (HTTP mode only)
• fetch_result_file (HTTP mode only)

Invocation — how to call Frenchie in each agent

Every agent handles MCP a little differently. /ocr is a Claude Code-only slash command; other agents use natural language, @-mention, or a server-name slash command. All facts below are dogfood-verified.

| Agent | Invoke | Full guide | |-------|--------|------------| | Claude Code | /ocr TOR.pdf | docs | | Cursor | Use Frenchie to OCR TOR.pdf | docs | | Codex (Desktop / CLI / IDE) | /frenchie TOR.pdf · @frenchie ocr TOR.pdf · natural language | docs | | Antigravity | /frenchie TOR.pdf (invokes by server name) | docs | | VS Code Copilot | /frenchie TOR.pdf | docs | | Claude Desktop | Use Frenchie to OCR TOR.pdf | docs | | Windsurf | OCR TOR.pdf via Frenchie | docs | | Gemini CLI | OCR TOR.pdf with Frenchie | docs | | Zed | OCR TOR.pdf via Frenchie | docs |

Something not working? See the symptom-first troubleshooting guide — every error we've hit in dogfood has a canonical entry.

Pricing

Simple numbers. No subscriptions.

| Action | Cost | |--------|------| | OCR | 1 credit per page | | Transcription | 2 credits per minute | | File extraction | 0.25 credits per page, 0.01 credits per row, or 0.5 credits per slide depending on format | | Image generation | 20 credits per image |

$1 = 100 credits. Credits don't expire.

Privacy

Files are processed and deleted. Results expire about 30 minutes after first delivery. If you need a durable copy, save the Markdown when it comes back.

Supported formats

OCR: PDF, PNG, JPG, JPEG, WebP

Transcription: MP3, M4A, WAV, MP4, MOV, WebM

File extraction: DOCX, XLSX, CSV, TSV, PPTX

Image generation: PNG, JPEG, WebP output from text prompts

Need help?

• Docs
• Dashboard
• LAB94
• [email protected]