transcribe-mcp

Transcribe audio and video, and find the silence worth cutting — from any MCP client. No account, no API key, no subscription. Your agent pays a fraction of a cent per call, in USDC, straight from a wallet you control.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "transcribe": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "transcribe-mcp"],
      "env": { "TRANSCRIBE_MCP_WALLET_KEY": "0x..." }
    }
  }
}

That is the whole setup. There is nothing to sign up for.

Tools

tool	what it does	price
transcribe_url	a public audio/video URL → text, timings, detected language	$0.05
find_dead_air	subtitles or timings → the spans worth cutting, and what you'd save	$0.002
shop_info	prices, limits and how payment works	free

find_dead_air eats exactly what transcribe_url returns, so the two chain: transcribe a talk, then cut the silence out of it.

"cuts": [{ "from": 2.55, "to": 10.85, "seconds": 8.3, "reason": "silence" }],
"stats": { "sourceSeconds": 20, "speechSeconds": 5.05, "wouldSavePercent": 74.75 }

Why pay-per-call instead of an API key

Because an agent cannot fill in a signup form. x402 is an HTTP-native payment: the server answers 402 Payment Required with a price, the client pays it, the request goes through. No dashboard, no key rotation, no minimum, no monthly bill. If you never call it, you never pay anything.

Settlement is USDC on Base (eip155:8453).

Running it without a wallet

It starts fine. shop_info answers, tools/list works, and the paid tools tell you what to set. Look before you fund anything.

What it will not do

• It will not overspend. Every call is filtered through a $0.10 ceiling; a quote above it is dropped and the client refuses to pay rather than guessing.
• It will not charge you for a refusal. Bad arguments are caught locally and never leave your machine. A 4xx from the shop never settles.
• It will not lie about a sale. If the settlement header is missing, it says so instead of reporting a payment it cannot prove.

Files are capped at 800 KB. Oversized ones are refused for free, before payment.

Configuration

variable	meaning
TRANSCRIBE_MCP_WALLET_KEY	private key of a wallet holding a little USDC on Base. Required only for the paid tools.

Use a dedicated wallet with a few dollars in it, not your main one. This is true of every tool you hand a private key to, and it is true here.

Tests

npm test

MIT.