Pocket Casts MCP Server

An MCP server that connects AI assistants to your Pocket Casts account. Browse your subscriptions, read episode details, and retrieve transcripts — with automatic transcription via AssemblyAI when no native transcript exists.

Built with Bun and FastMCP. Deployable to Railway or any Docker host.

Tools

Setup

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.3+

• A Pocket Casts account (Plus required for API access)

Install and authenticate

bun install
bun run login

The login command will prompt for your Pocket Casts email and password, then save tokens to auth.json.

Configure environment

Create a .env file:

MCP_API_KEY=your-secret-key-here
ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY=your-assemblyai-key    # optional, enables transcription fallback

Run

bun run start

The server starts on port 3001 (override with PORT env var) using HTTP stream transport.

Connecting to an MCP client

Point your MCP client at:

http://localhost:3001/mcp

Authenticate with either:

• Authorization: Bearer <MCP_API_KEY> header

• ?api_key=<MCP_API_KEY> query parameter

Deploy to Railway

The included Dockerfile is Railway-ready. Set these environment variables in your Railway project:

How transcripts work

1. Checks for Pocket Casts-generated transcripts first

2. Falls back to RSS-sourced transcripts if available

3. If neither exists and ASSEMBLYAI_API_KEY is set, submits the audio URL directly to AssemblyAI for transcription (no file download required)