chutes-media-mcp

Generate image, video, music and speech through Chutes from inside any coding agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Codex, OpenCode, Claude Desktop — and have the generated asset saved straight into the project you're working on.

It ships as:

• an MCP server (chutes-media-mcp, stdio) — the primary, universal interface,
• a thin CLI (chutes-media) — a fallback for shells and agents without MCP support, and
• an optional Agent Skill (skill/chutes-media) documenting the describe→generate workflow (auto-loaded by Claude Code; usable as reference by any agent).

Both frontends are thin adapters over one shared, transport-agnostic core, so they behave identically.

Not officially affiliated with or endorsed by Chutes. "Chutes" belongs to its respective owners; this is an independent, open-source community tool.

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Features

• 🎨 Four media kinds: image, video, music, speech — plus image editing (img2img / inpaint) when a model exposes an edit cord.
• 🔎 describe → generate workflow: the live model schema is fetched and handed to the agent; payloads are never hardcoded.
• 💾 Saves assets into your project (default ./assets/chutes/<kind>/) and returns the path.
• ✅ Validates the payload against the live schema before spending a GPU call.
• 🧾 Provenance + guardrails: writes a sidecar (model, params, schema hash) next to each asset, rejects unknown params, and verifies the returned media type matches what you asked for.
• 🔁 Automatic cold-start retry with backoff for models scaled to zero.
• 📡 Progress updates during long video/music jobs (MCP progress notifications / CLI stderr).
• 🧩 Works everywhere: MCP server or CLI, same behavior.

How it works: describe → generate

Chutes models differ wildly (FLUX vs Qwen-Image vs Wan vs LTX vs ACE-Step vs a TTS model), so payloads are never hardcoded. The flow is always:

1. list_media_models — discover a model for the kind you want.
2. describe_media_model — fetch the model's live cords and input schema.
3. generate_media — submit the payload you composed; the asset is saved into the workspace.

The server owns all the plumbing: auth, cold-start warmup + retry, blocking invocation with progress, downloading, saving, light validation, and best-effort cost reporting.

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Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 20
• A Chutes API key (CHUTES_API_KEY). Create one in your Chutes account.

Install

An MCP server isn't "installed" like an app — it's registered as a command in your MCP client's config (see Use as an MCP server). Pick whichever way of providing that command suits you:

1. npx from npm — recommended (no install):

npx chutes-media-mcp        # MCP server (stdio)
npx -p chutes-media-mcp chutes-media --help   # CLI bin

2. Global install:

npm install -g chutes-media-mcp
# then `chutes-media-mcp` (server) and `chutes-media` (CLI) are on your PATH

3. Directly from GitHub (no npm needed): builds on install via the prepare script.

npx -y github:TheStreamCode/chutes-media-mcp

4. From source (for development):

git clone https://github.com/TheStreamCode/chutes-media-mcp
cd chutes-media-mcp && npm install && npm run build
# then point your client at: node /abs/path/dist/mcp/server.js

The package ships two bins: chutes-media-mcp (the MCP server) and chutes-media (the CLI).

Configuration

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
CHUTES_API_KEY	✅	—	Your Chutes API key. Read from the environment; never written to disk.
CHUTES_AUTH_SCHEME		raw	How the key is sent in Authorization: raw (the key as-is) or bearer (prefixed Bearer ). On a 401, try flipping this.
CHUTES_API_BASE_URL		https://api.chutes.ai	Management API base URL.
CHUTES_OUTPUT_DIR		assets/chutes	Output directory (relative to the agent's CWD). A <kind>/ subfolder is appended.
CHUTES_WARMUP		true	Warm models up before invoking. Set false to skip.
CHUTES_COLD_START_RETRIES		4	Retries when a cold model returns 503 no-instances (0 disables).
CHUTES_COLD_START_BACKOFF_MS		8000	Base backoff between cold-start retries (grows per attempt).
CHUTES_PROGRESS_INTERVAL_MS		5000	How often progress heartbeats are emitted while a call blocks.
CHUTES_ALLOW_UNKNOWN_PARAMS		false	When true, allow params not in the model schema. Default rejects them so a renamed/unknown field fails loudly.
CHUTES_PROVENANCE		true	Write a <asset>.json provenance sidecar (model, cord, params, schema hash). Set false to disable.

Generated assets are saved to ./assets/chutes/<kind>/ by default, relative to wherever the agent is running — so they land inside the project being worked on.

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Use as an MCP server

Claude Code:

claude mcp add chutes-media --env CHUTES_API_KEY=cpk_your_key -- npx -y chutes-media-mcp

Cursor / Cline / Windsurf / OpenCode / Claude Desktop (generic mcpServers config):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "chutes-media": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "chutes-media-mcp"],
      "env": { "CHUTES_API_KEY": "cpk_your_key" }
    }
  }
}

To run without npm, replace the args with ["-y", "github:TheStreamCode/chutes-media-mcp"].

Tools

• list_media_models — { kind?, query?, limit? } → matching models.
• describe_media_model — { model } → every cord with required fields, types, defaults, a minimal example payload, and a top-level supportsEditing. Call this before generating.
• generate_media — { model, kind, params, cord?, output_dir?, filename?, timeout_ms? } → runs the generation and returns { path, kind, model, cord, bytes, contentType, cost?, durationMs }. params is what you composed from the described schema.

Example agent workflow

"Generate a hero image of a misty mountain range and drop it into the landing page."

The agent calls describe_media_model on an image model, composes { prompt: "misty mountain range at dawn, cinematic", width: 1024, height: 1024 }, calls generate_media, gets back ./assets/chutes/image/<model>-<timestamp>.png, and references that path in index.html.

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Use as a CLI

export CHUTES_API_KEY="cpk_your_key"          # PowerShell: $env:CHUTES_API_KEY = "cpk_..."

# Discover models
chutes-media list --kind image
chutes-media list --query flux

# Inspect a model's schema
chutes-media describe owner/model-slug

# Generate (inline JSON, @file, or a path to a .json file for --params)
chutes-media generate --kind image --model owner/model-slug \
  --params '{"prompt":"a red bicycle on a cobblestone street"}'

Progress is printed to stderr; the JSON result (including the saved path) is printed to stdout, so agents can parse it.

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Image editing (img2img / inpaint)

Chutes has no platform-wide edit endpoint. Editing exists only when a model publishes an edit cord (e.g. img2img, inpaint) or is a dedicated edit model. describe_media_model reports supportsEditing and lists those cords. To use one, reference a workspace file in params (a single field like image, or an array like image_b64s) — the server reads the file and base64-encodes it:

chutes-media generate --kind image --model owner/edit-capable --cord img2img \
  --params '{"prompt":"make it snowy","image":"assets/chutes/image/scene.jpg","strength":0.6}'

When a model has no edit cord, only generation is available.

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Agent Skill (optional)

The MCP server already ships instructions (the describe→generate workflow), so any client receives guidance on connect — no skill required.

For Claude Code you can additionally install the bundled Agent Skill (skill/chutes-media) for richer, auto-loaded guidance:

npx -p chutes-media-mcp chutes-media install-skill             # → ~/.claude/skills/chutes-media
npx -p chutes-media-mcp chutes-media install-skill --project   # → ./.claude/skills/chutes-media

(Or copy the folder into your skills directory manually.) Agents without skill auto-loading don't need it — the tool descriptions and server instructions already guide them.

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Cost

Chutes prices by compute units. When a model exposes the cost via a response header it is returned as cost; otherwise cost is omitted. Check the Chutes pricing for per-model rates.

💡 Many public models scale to zero and may return 503 no-instances until they warm up. The server retries automatically; if a model stays cold, pick another of the same kind.

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Development

See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup, the build/test commands, and the Windows #-path caveat. Quick version:

npm install
npm run typecheck
npm run test
npm run build

Security

Never commit your API key. See SECURITY.md for how the key is handled and how to report vulnerabilities.

Author

Built by Michael Gasperini — founder of Mikesoft, building small, focused, privacy-aware developer tools.

If this project is useful to you, consider sponsoring its development. 💛

License

MIT © Michael Gasperini (Mikesoft)