MCP Movie Assistant

An MCP server for exploring TMDB movie data. It exposes tools for searching, discovering, and reading movie information over stdio.

Requirements

• Node.js 18 or newer

• npm

• A TMDB credential

Related MCP server: moviefinder-mcp

Install

npm install

Environment

Create a .env file in the project root.

Supported TMDB variables:

# Preferred for TMDB v4 bearer auth
TMDB_API_KEY=your_tmdb_v4_access_token

# Optional fallback used if no bearer token is present
TMDB_API_KEY_V3=your_tmdb_v3_api_key

# Legacy variable names also supported by the code
API_TOKEN_READ_ONLY=your_tmdb_v4_access_token
API_KEY=your_tmdb_v3_api_key

Notes:

• The server loads .env on startup.

• If both token styles are present, the bearer token is used first.

• Do not commit .env; it is already ignored by git.

Build

Compile the TypeScript source into build/:

npm run build

Run the server

After building, start the MCP server with:

npm start

This runs node ./build/index.js.

Open the MCP Inspector

The inspector script builds first, then launches the inspector against the compiled server:

npm run inspector

Available tools

The server currently exposes these MCP tools:

• search-movies

• get-movie-details

• get-trending-movies

• get-movie-recommendations

• discover-movies

Troubleshooting

TMDB request failed with status 401

This usually means the token was not loaded or the wrong variable name is being used.

Check that:

• Your .env file exists at the project root

• It contains a valid TMDB token or API key

• The value is assigned to one of the supported variables above

• You rebuilt after making code changes with npm run build

Inspector says Not connected

This usually means the inspector tried to launch build/index.js before the project was built, or the process exited early.

Fix:

npm run build
npm run inspector

Project structure

src/
  index.ts     # loads env and starts the stdio transport
  server.ts    # MCP server instance
  tools.ts     # TMDB-backed tools
  api.ts       # TMDB fetch helper
build/         # generated output from tsc

Scripts

• npm run build - compile TypeScript to build/

• npm start - run the compiled server

• npm run inspector - build and open the MCP inspector

• npm test - placeholder test script

License

No license has been declared in this repository yet.