How to Edit Videos with an MCP Server: A Step-by-Step Guide

The first time Claude finds the best clips in your video, cuts vertical shorts, writes the show notes, and pays for each job without pausing once, you laugh. To make it happen, connect the Weftly MCP server (api.weftly.ai/mcp) to your AI host, then ask. Setup is three commands and a few dollars.

Isn’t that demo cool? The first time I used the Weftly MCP server, I had a huge smile on my face. You just ask for the files you want. No tabs to switch to. No keys to paste. The agent calls, the agent pays, the agent comes back with the work done.

Here is how to set it up yourself.

What You Need

One MCP-compatible AI host: Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, or Goose. A source file up to 5 GB (MP4, MOV, WebM, or audio formats). Pay with a mppx wallet funded with a few dollars of USDC on the Tempo network. The wallet is the part that feels like magic, because the agent signs and pays on its own with no interruption.

You can still pay for each job with a credit card if you prefer.

That is the entire prerequisite list. No account on weftly.ai, no API key, no signup.

Step 1: Connect the Server

The endpoint is the same in every host:

https://api.weftly.ai/mcp

Claude Desktop or claude.ai: Settings, Integrations, Add custom connector, paste, save. Restart.

Claude Code: the official plugin wires up the server and the payment signer in one shot.

/plugin marketplace add woven-record-media/weftly-plugins
/plugin install weftly-setup@weftly
/weftly-setup:weftly-setup --wallet <your-mppx-wallet>

Cursor, VS Code Copilot, Goose, anything else: add the URL as a standard MCP Streamable HTTP server. No session ID, no registration.

Step 2: Ask for the Clips

Open your host and say:

Find the best three short-form clips in this episode: /path/to/episode.mp4

Claude calls find_clips ($2.00). Weftly transcribes the video as a free byproduct of that call and returns ranked candidates with timestamps and hook text. The transcript comes back in the same response, so you do not pay for it twice.

The first paid call triggers a payment_required response. In a terminal host with mppx configured, the client signs and retries on its own. You do not see the moment happen. If you want to pay with a credit card, a Stripe Checkout link appears, you paste it into your browser and pay there.

Step 3: Cut What You Want

Tell your AI tool which clips and formats you want to create:

Cut a vertical clip from 12:30 to 14:00, TikTok primary format, and one for Instagram reels

extract_vertical_clip runs ($0.50 per cut). Weftly reads the source from storage, trims, re-encodes at specified format with loudness-normalized audio, returns a download URL. No re-upload. You have 72 hours of free reuse on the parent video, which is enough to cut as many shorts as you can think of.

A long podcast turned into five vertical shorts: $2.00 + (5 × $0.50) = $4.50, end to end.

Step 4: Show Notes and Summaries (Optional)

For show notes or a blog draft, two options:

• Call summarize ($0.75 audio, $1.25 video) for a Claude-written summary plus a word-level SRT.
• Or, if you already ran find_clips, just ask the agent to summarize the transcript it already has. That part is free.

A Worked Example

You: Here is the episode. Find five short-form clips, cut them as 9:16
     vertical for TikTok, and write a 300-word blog summary.

Claude: [find_clips]                       $2.00
        [extract_vertical_clip × 5]        $2.50
        [drafts blog post from transcript] free

        Done. Five MP4 shorts attached, blog post below.

Total: $4.50. About fifteen minutes for a sixty-minute episode. For the full cost picture against subscription tools, see the 2026 podcast post-production cost comparison.

How Payment Stays Out of the Way

The Weftly MCP server uses the Machine Payments Protocol. Every paid call returns a payment challenge, and your host handles it one of two ways.

With mppx and a funded Tempo wallet, the client signs the challenge locally and the call retries automatically. The agent never pauses. Weftly never sees your private key.

Without one, the challenge includes a Stripe Checkout URL. Pay by card or Apple Pay, and the agent picks up where it stopped.

Either way, you never paste an API key and you never sign up for an account. Pay per call is the auth model.

Things That Occasionally Go Sideways

Agent does not see Weftly tools. Restart the host. Claude Desktop and Claude Code load MCP servers at startup.

Stripe Checkout link will not open. Some hosts suppress inline links. Copy the URL from the tool response, open it in a browser, then ask the agent to retry with the same job_id.

Vertical clip looks off-center. Ask the agent to enable subject-aware reframing on the next call. The encoder will track the active speaker.

Job hangs. Ask the agent to call get_job_status(job_id). The response shows the current pipeline stage. Typical podcast-length input finishes within ten minutes.

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MCP endpoint: api.weftly.ai/mcp · Setup guide: weftly.ai/mcp · Claude Code plugin: github.com/woven-record-media/weftly-plugins · Pay per job · No subscription · weftly.ai