Rundown Studio MCP

A remote MCP server that lets Claude (or any MCP client) read and edit Rundown Studio rundowns through the Rundown Studio v1 API. It runs as a single Cloudflare Worker that you deploy to your own Cloudflare account with wrangler.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Rundown Studio. "Rundown Studio" is a trademark of its owner.

Related MCP server: DaVinci Resolve MCP Server

What it can do

Not included: live show control (start, pause, next and so on), rich-text formatting, mentions, text variables, and the v0 API.

Plain text only. Cells come back as plain text. update_cell_text replaces the whole cell, so writing to a cell that holds formatting, mentions or images would erase them. The tool reads the cell first and refuses to write if it holds anything beyond plain text, unless the call sets replace_rich_content: true. Results mark such cells with has_rich_content: true.

How access works

Claude ──OAuth 2.1──► Worker (/authorize, /callback, /token, /register, /mcp)
                        │  Google sign-in, checked against ALLOWED_EMAILS
                        ▼
                      MCP tools ──► Rundown Studio v1 API (your team API token)

• Connecting uses OAuth 2.1 via @cloudflare/workers-oauth-provider. When you add the connector, you approve it on a consent page and sign in with Google.

• Google is used only to learn who is signing in. Only the openid email scopes are requested, and no Google tokens are stored. The ALLOWED_EMAILS allowlist is the approval gate. It is re-checked on every MCP request, so removing an address cuts off its existing grants right away.

• Rundown Studio calls use one team API token, stored as a Worker secret. Everyone on the allowlist acts with that token's permissions.

• OAuth grants and tokens live in a Workers KV namespace (OAUTH_KV).

Requirements

• A Cloudflare account. The Workers free plan is enough.

• Node.js 20 or newer.

• A Rundown Studio API token. See the getting started guide.

• A Google Cloud project where you can create an OAuth client.

Setup

Each team should deploy its own Worker with its own API token, since anyone allowed to sign in acts with that token.

1. Install and log in

npm install
npx wrangler login

wrangler login picks your Cloudflare account, so no account ID goes in the config.

2. Deploy once to get your URL

npx wrangler deploy

This creates the Worker and its KV namespace, and prints the URL, https://rundown-studio-mcp.<your-subdomain>.workers.dev. Until the secrets are set, every request returns 503 Not configured: missing ..., which lists the missing names but never their values.

3. Create a Google OAuth client

In Google Cloud Console, open APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → OAuth client ID, and choose the application type Web application. Add these authorized redirect URIs:

• https://rundown-studio-mcp.<your-subdomain>.workers.dev/callback

• http://localhost:8787/callback (only if you'll run it locally)

If the consent screen is in testing mode, add your Google account as a test user.

4. Set the secrets

npx wrangler secret put RUNDOWN_STUDIO_TOKEN
npx wrangler secret put GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID
npx wrangler secret put GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET
npx wrangler secret put ALLOWED_EMAILS

5. Connect it to Claude

In Claude, open Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector and enter https://rundown-studio-mcp.<your-subdomain>.workers.dev/mcp. Approve the consent page, then sign in with an allowlisted Google account.

Local development

cp .dev.vars.example .dev.vars   # then fill in real values
npm run dev                      # http://localhost:8787

Optional: Doppler

wrangler secret put and .dev.vars are all you need. If you already keep secrets in Doppler, you can use it instead:

doppler setup --scope .      # pick your project and dev config; stored outside the repo
npm run dev:doppler          # wrangler dev with secrets from Doppler
npm run smoke:doppler        # smoke test with secrets from Doppler

dev:doppler needs every secret in the table above (plus TEST_RUNDOWN_ID for the smoke test).

Doppler has no built-in sync to Cloudflare Workers. To push your production config to the Worker, create a gitignored .doppler-push file naming it:

DOPPLER_PROJECT=<your-project>
DOPPLER_CONFIG=<your-production-config>

Then npm run secrets:push sends the four Worker secrets with wrangler secret bulk (needs jq). npm run deploy runs it first, so Doppler becomes the source of truth and any value changed only in the Cloudflare dashboard is overwritten on the next deploy. The push refuses to run if any of the four is empty in Doppler. Without .doppler-push, it is skipped and deploys use the secrets already on the Worker.

How the tools are built

scripts/generate-tools.ts downloads the OpenAPI spec and turns an allowlist of operations into tool definitions. Only the spec's structure is used: paths, methods, field names, types and limits. The spec itself is not stored in this repo, and none of its text is copied. The generator:

• takes every tool title and description, and every argument description, from text written in the generator, and fails if an argument has none;

• drops every description, summary, title, example and x-* key from the spec (the spec's examples carry sample IDs), plus the rich-text field content_html;

• merges path, query and body parameters into one input schema, renaming the rundown id to rundown_id;

• marks GET tools read-only and DELETE tools destructive, using MCP annotations;

• pins every ID argument (rundown_id, cue_id, column_id, and the IDs inside position and cue_order) to ^[A-Za-z0-9_-]{1,64}$;

• fails if an allowlisted operation disappears or is no longer marked x-mcp: true.

To add a tool, add an entry to TOOLS in the generator with its title, description and argument descriptions, run npm run generate, and add tests.

Rate limits and retries

Rundown Studio limits requests per team: 20 per minute on the free plan and 120 per minute on paid plans, shared by every token in the team. The server:

• waits for Retry-After on a 429 and retries, waiting at most 30 seconds at a time and 45 seconds per tool call;

• retries 5xx errors and network failures with exponential backoff;

• sends an Idempotency-Key with every write and reuses it across that write's retries, so a retried create never makes a duplicate cue.

get_rundown with include=cues,columns,cells returns a whole rundown in one request. For a rundown with more than 1,000 cells, use list_cells instead.

Security notes

• Secrets live only in Worker secrets and your local, gitignored .dev.vars.

• Logs never include tokens, request URLs or cell content.

• The Worker refuses to serve until every secret and the KV binding is present.

• Every tool call is validated against its full input schema before any request reaches Rundown Studio, so a malformed argument or an ID such as .. never shapes an API path.

• Requests to Rundown Studio never follow redirects, so the API token is only sent to the API itself. A redirect comes back as an error.

• delete_cue reads the cue order first and refuses a group that still holds cues, which the API would otherwise delete along with it.

• The API lets delete and reorder ignore a cue's Prevent Edits lock, so delete_cue and reorder_cues read the rundown's cues first. delete_cue refuses a locked cue, or a group holding one. reorder_cues refuses any order that changes a locked cue's group or its index among its siblings; other cues may still move. If the cues can't be read, both refuse rather than guess.

• Only redirect URIs for Claude, Cursor and localhost are accepted when connecting (see allowedRedirectPatterns in src/googleHandler.ts).

Project layout

src/index.ts            Worker entry: OAuth provider, missing-secret check
src/googleHandler.ts    Consent page, Google sign-in, allowlist
src/mcpHandler.ts       /mcp: stateless Streamable HTTP MCP server
src/tools.ts            Tool dispatch, plain-text shaping, cell guard
src/tools.generated.ts  Generated tool definitions (do not edit)
src/rundownClient.ts    API client: retries, backoff, idempotency keys
scripts/                Generator, live smoke test, secret scan
test/                   Unit tests (vitest)