Importly

Using Importly with MCP (Claude, Cursor, and other AI agents)

The Importly MCP server lets AI agents download, transcribe, and inspect any video or audio URL through the Model Context Protocol. If you're building with Claude, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible client, your agent gets media-ingestion superpowers with one config block — no yt-dlp, proxies, or ffmpeg.

What You Can Build

  • "Summarize this video" — agents transcribe any URL and work with the text
  • Research agents that pull metadata and transcripts from cited videos
  • Content pipelines where an agent downloads media to hosted storage and hands off a direct link
  • Podcast/interview processing with timestamped segments

Prerequisites

  1. An Importly API key — new accounts get $3.00 in free credits, no card required
  2. An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, …)

Setup

Claude Code

bash
1claude mcp add importly -e IMPORTLY_API_KEY=your_key -- npx -y importly-mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf

Add to your client's MCP config (claude_desktop_config.json, .cursor/mcp.json, etc.):

json
1{
2  "mcpServers": {
3    "importly": {
4      "command": "npx",
5      "args": ["-y", "importly-mcp"],
6      "env": { "IMPORTLY_API_KEY": "your_key" }
7    }
8  }
9}

Available Tools

| Tool | What it does | | ---- | ------------ | | import_media / check_import | Download media, get a direct link (optionally with transcript) | | transcribe_media / check_transcription | Speech-to-text with timestamped segments | | get_metadata / check_metadata | Full metadata without downloading | | get_basic_metadata / check_basic_metadata | Fast title/duration/thumbnail | | check_balance | Remaining credit balance |

Jobs are async — submit tools return a jobId and the agent polls the matching check tool. The tool responses guide the agent through this automatically.

Try It

Ask your agent:

Transcribe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw and summarize it in one sentence.

Related Resources

Make.comAuthentication & Security