pepys-mcp

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_guids. | | 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

Publish

npm run build && npm publish (publishes pepys-mcp). Registry listings (MCP registry, mcp.so, Smithery, PulseMCP, Glama, awesome-mcp-servers) are submitted separately.

License

MIT