Premiere Pro MCP Server

Lets Claude (or any MCP client) drive Adobe Premiere Pro directly — import media, build and edit timelines, add markers, apply effects/transitions, and export — through natural-language requests.

Why this needs a "bridge" instead of a normal API

Premiere Pro doesn't expose a network API. The only supported way to script it is Adobe's CEP (Common Extensibility Platform) panel system, which runs a small web view inside Premiere and can execute ExtendScript (an ES3-era JavaScript dialect) against Premiere's scripting DOM. So the pieces are:

Claude Desktop ──stdio──▶ MCP Server (Node, this repo's src/)
                                │
                          WebSocket :8085
                                │
                    CEP Panel (inside Premiere, Node-enabled)
                                │
                     CSInterface.evalScript()
                                │
                  ExtendScript (.jsx) ──▶ Premiere Pro DOM / QE DOM

• MCP server (src/) — a normal Node/TypeScript process that Claude Desktop launches over stdio. It exposes ~25 tools (import, timeline editing, markers, effects, transitions, export, plus a raw ExtendScript escape hatch).
• CEP panel (cep-plugin/) — loads inside Premiere via Window > Extensions > MCP Bridge. With Node integration enabled it runs a small WebSocket server that the MCP server connects to, dispatches each request into ExtendScript via CSInterface.evalScript(), and returns the JSON result.
• ExtendScript libraries (cep-plugin/jsx/) — the actual Premiere automation code: project/sequence queries, timeline manipulation, markers, effects (via the undocumented but widely-used QE DOM), and export.

Requirements

• Windows, Adobe Premiere Pro (2020+ recommended)
• Node.js 18+
• Claude Desktop (or another MCP-compatible client)

Install

install.bat

This will:

1. Enable CEP debug mode in the registry (required — this panel isn't code-signed by Adobe, so Premiere won't load it otherwise).
2. Symlink cep-plugin/ into %APPDATA%\Adobe\CEP\extensions\premiere-mcp-bridge.
3. npm install the CEP panel's dependency (ws).
4. npm install && npm run build the MCP server.

Then:

1. Fully quit and reopen Premiere Pro (extensions are only scanned at launch).
2. In Premiere: Window > Extensions > MCP Bridge. The panel should show "Waiting for MCP server…".
3. Add the server to your Claude Desktop config (%APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "premiere-pro": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["C:/absolute/path/to/adobe-premiere-mcp/dist/server.js"]
    }
  }
}

4. Restart Claude Desktop. Open the MCP Bridge panel in Premiere before your Claude session so the WebSocket connection is live.

Tools

Category	Tools
Project	get_project_info, list_project_items, import_media, create_sequence, set_active_sequence, save_project
Timeline	get_timeline_items, insert_clip, overwrite_clip, append_clip, remove_clip, trim_clip, move_clip, add_track, set_clip_disabled
Markers	add_marker, get_markers, clear_markers
Effects/Transitions	list_video_effects, apply_effect, apply_transition
Export	export_sequence
Escape hatch	execute_extendscript — runs arbitrary ExtendScript for anything not covered above

Try: "Import the clips in C:/footage, create a new sequence called Rough Cut, append them all to V1 in order, add a cross dissolve between each, and drop a marker at the start of every clip."

Notes & limitations

• Effects/transitions use the QE DOM. This is an undocumented Adobe API that ships with Premiere and is what nearly every Premiere automation tool relies on for effect/transition-by-name operations, since the public DOM doesn't expose them. It's stable in practice but not officially documented, and exact effect/transition names can vary slightly by Premiere version — use list_video_effects as a starting point, or right-click an effect in Premiere and check its name if apply_effect can't find it.
• execute_extendscript is a full escape hatch — treat access to this MCP server like shell access to the machine running Premiere. Don't expose it over an untrusted network.
• Not code-signed. Loading it requires CEP debug mode (which install.bat enables). This is normal for community/dev CEP panels.
• This ships with ~25 solid tools covering the core editing workflow rather than every possible Premiere operation (color grading presets, captions, MOGRT graphics, audio ducking, etc. aren't wired up yet). The architecture (cep-plugin/jsx/*.jsx + src/tools/*.ts) is built so adding more is just adding another cmd_* ExtendScript function and matching MCP tool — happy to add more if you tell me which workflows matter most to you.