MCP connection modes

The server can be reached four ways. Three are open today. Remote with no key is open to everyone. Remote with a key needs an API key from your account. Local runs on your machine from the command-line tool, with your Scribiz account or your own Gemini key. OAuth is not built yet.

Remote, no key

Paste https://scribiz.com/mcp into a client and it works. There is nothing to sign up for.

What you get:

• Captions, when our server can read them. Up to 30 caption lookups a day, counted per connection.
• Results Scribiz has already stored for a video, at no cost, however they were first read. The one exception is a summary Scribiz has not written for it yet, which uses a tenth of the video's length.
• When there are no captions our server can read, a model reads the video from its link. Its times are approximate, about 2 seconds either way, it has no speaker labels, and the result says so.
• 5 questions a day with ask_video, 0.1 minute each.

That reading uses the same 10 minutes a day as the free web tool, for videos up to 15 minutes. It is charged by the length of the video that was actually read, so a 19 second video uses about 19 seconds of your 10 minutes. Captions use a tenth of that. A video known to be longer than 15 minutes is refused before anything is used.

What you do not get is Watch. The server never looks at the picture, so there are no on-screen notes, and a question about what was shown is answered from the words only.

Everyone who connects without a key also shares one more daily limit. It is separate from the website's free tools: neither can use up the other's. When your 10 minutes or that shared limit are used up, captions and videos already processed still work. The error says what is used up and that it resets at 00:00 UTC. See Limits and cost.

Remote, with a key

Send your API key as a bearer token, or in an X-API-Key header. Keys are made in the dashboard, after you sign in with an email link. Give a key the mcp scope if it will only be used for this.

Authorization: Bearer sbz_live_your_key_here

This unlocks Listen, Watch and Both, counted in your plan's minutes. A key with the mcp or all scope works. A bad key is 401, and a key with only the read scope is 403. A session token from the website is not accepted. The same key works for the API, and calls from both share one balance.

Clients that accept a custom header work with a key: Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Codex and the agent SDKs. claude.ai signs in with OAuth rather than a key. For it, use the keyless URL today and OAuth when it ships.

Local

scribiz mcp runs the server on your machine over standard input and output. Your client starts it as a command. It comes with the command-line tool: run npm install -g scribiz, then scribiz login to use a free Scribiz account, or scribiz setup to save your own Gemini key. It needs Node.js 24 or newer, ffmpeg and yt-dlp (see Install the CLI), and only macOS has been tested. The watch argument and stored on-screen notes need scribiz 0.1.1 or newer.

claude mcp add scribiz -- scribiz mcp

Choose it when:

• The video is a file on your disk. Add --allow-files, and --root for each folder the agent may read. Without --root, the current folder is the one allowed folder, except /, your home folder or a folder above it: a client that starts the server in one of those must pass --root.
• The site blocks servers (TikTok, Instagram, and others). The local server fetches from your connection.
• You want to use your own Gemini key. Audio goes from your machine to Google, and no Scribiz minutes are used.
• You want your free account's minutes (30 a month) in an agent on your machine, with no API key to make. Audio goes from your machine to Scribiz, which sends it to Google.

It reads the same credential as the CLI, and the first match wins: SCRIBIZ_API_KEY, then GEMINI_API_KEY, then what scribiz login or scribiz setup saved. One credential is saved at a time. The credential is read on every tool call, so a sign-in you save after the client started is picked up. If GEMINI_API_KEY is set in the environment your client starts the server with, it wins over a saved sign-in. See Authentication.

With an account and no minutes left, a tool call returns the error QUOTA and says when your minutes come back. Your own Gemini key is the other way.

Watch and on-screen notes

The local server takes the watch argument on get_video_context and ask_video, the same as the remote server with a key. watch: true reads the picture too (slides, code, text on screen), even when the video is mostly speech. On-screen notes that are already stored come with the result at no cost. Both are described on Tools. What a read costs is paid by your credential: your account's minutes with a Scribiz sign-in, or Google's bill with your own Gemini key.

What is different from the remote server

The remote server with a key is the one to use when you do not want to install anything. The local server is the one to use for files, for sites that block servers, and to run with your own Gemini key.

The model that calls the server may have read a page that told it to fetch a link. So the local server refuses links to your own machine and to private networks (localhost, 192.168.x.x, *.local, a cloud metadata address), and pages that only the generic reader of yt-dlp handles. Direct media links, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Vimeo and X work. --allow-private-network lifts both rules.

scribiz mcp --allow-files --root ~/Recordings

scribiz mcp: ready on stdio · files allowed under /Users/you/Recordings

A path outside the allowed folders is refused:

Scribiz error INPUT_UNSUPPORTED (not retryable): That file is outside the folders this server may readHint: Allowed folders: /Users/you/Recordings. Move the file there or start the server with another --root.

OAuth, coming later

claude.ai signs in with OAuth. It is not built yet. When it ships, adding the URL will open a Scribiz sign-in and consent page, and the connection will appear in your dashboard, where you can revoke it.

Until then:

• To use Listen and Watch from claude.ai, there is no supported way yet.
• To use Listen and Watch from a coding agent, use a key, or the local server.
• To read a video from claude.ai, use the keyless URL.

Which one