Creator Studio MCP

An unofficial MCP server and agent skill that let Claude, Codex or any MCP client drive the Apple Creator Studio apps on your Mac: Pixelmator Pro, Keynote, Pages, Numbers, Compressor, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic Pro and MainStage. This project is unofficial and not affiliated with Apple. "Creator Studio" is Apple's subscription bundle, and you need your own copies of the apps.

Everything runs locally. The server talks to the apps through AppleScript (osascript), macOS Accessibility, Compressor's command-line tool and FCPXML files. Nothing is sent over the network.

The repository has two parts:

• The server (this folder): the creator-studio-mcp npm package, which exposes the apps, plus headless Blender, the Rive CLI and Godot, as MCP tools.

• The studio skill (skills/studio/): instructions that take a design, media or game job from request to delivered files, using those tools.

Install the skill

npx skills add teemukinos/creator-studio-mcp

For claude.ai, download studio.zip from the latest release and upload it as a skill.

The skill installs without the server, so install the server as well.

Related MCP server: fcp-mcp-server

Install the server

Add one config entry per assistant. Use full paths: GUI apps don't see your shell's PATH, so get the path with which npx.

# Claude Code
claude mcp add --scope user creator-studio -- npx -y creator-studio-mcp@0.7.1

# Codex, in ~/.codex/config.toml
[mcp_servers.creator-studio]
command = "/full/path/to/npx"
args = ["-y", "creator-studio-mcp@0.7.1"]

For Claude desktop, open Settings > Developer > Edit Config and merge an mcpServers entry with the same command and arguments.

To run from a clone instead:

git clone https://github.com/teemukinos/creator-studio-mcp
cd creator-studio-mcp
npm install --omit=dev

Then point your config at dist/index.js in the clone, with the full path to node as the command. dist/ is committed, so no build step is needed.

The full steps, including permissions and how to verify the install, are in skills/studio/references/setup.md.

Tools

No editors on screen

Nothing this server drives is meant to be seen. Creator Studio apps launch hidden (open -g -j) and are hidden again after every tool call. Blender runs in background mode, Rive runs as a command-line build and Godot runs with --headless, so none of them opens a window.

Every UI tool checks first whether the screen is locked. While it is, hidden apps show no windows, so the tool stops with a clear error instead of returning an empty result.

Reaching every expert feature

Apple's scripting dictionaries only cover part of each app, and Final Cut Pro, Motion, Logic Pro, Compressor and MainStage have little or none. These tools reach everything else (AI features, effects, exports, inspectors) the way you do: through the app's menus, buttons and dialogs, using macOS Accessibility.

Tested on Creator Studio: Keynote's Generate Presenter Notes (generated notes read back), Final Cut Pro's Enhance Light and Color on a timeline built and imported by the server, and Motion's full menu and project browser. Final Cut's Generate Captions, Beat Detection, Smart Conform, Magnetic Mask, Auto Mask, Enhance Audio and Export XML are all reachable the same way.

Apps are driven in the background: menu commands and buttons are pressed through Accessibility, shortcuts are sent straight to the app's process, files open with open -g, and screenshots capture the app's window even when it's covered. Your screen isn't taken over. Pass front: true to bring an app forward.

Extra permissions for these tools: Accessibility (System Settings › Privacy & Security › Accessibility) for the app that runs the server (Claude, your terminal, Codex or your editor), and Screen Recording for ui_screenshot.

Open each app once by hand after installing it: first-run welcome and subscription screens block automation until they're dismissed.

Safety defaults: paths must be absolute (or start with ~/); no tool overwrites an existing file unless you pass overwrite: true, and none writes over its own input. The one exception is numbers_write_cells without an output, which saves the spreadsheet in place (its description says so, and it's marked destructive so clients can ask first). Documents opened by the server are always closed without saving changes to the source.

Requirements

• macOS with the apps you want to use installed (any subset works)

• Node.js 20 or later (node --version)

• Blender, the Rive CLI and Godot only for jobs that use them

First run: permissions

The first time a tool talks to each app, macOS asks whether Claude may control it. Click Allow. If you clicked Don't Allow, re-enable it in System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation (or run tccutil reset AppleEvents). A denied permission shows up as error -1743.

Creator Studio vs one-time-purchase editions

Creator Studio editions install as separate apps, e.g. Keynote Creator Studio.app with bundle ID com.apple.Keynote, next to any older edition. The server finds every copy in /Applications and ~/Applications, prefers the Creator Studio edition, and targets it by path when copies would be ambiguous. Ask your assistant to run creator_studio_status to see what it found. To pin a specific copy, add an env block to the config:

"env": {
  "FINALCUT_APP": "/Applications/Final Cut Pro.app",
  "PIXELMATOR_APP": "/Applications/Pixelmator Pro.app"
}

Variables: PIXELMATOR_APP, KEYNOTE_APP, PAGES_APP, NUMBERS_APP, FINALCUT_APP, COMPRESSOR_APP.

Things to know

• Dialogs block automation. If Pixelmator Pro (or any app) shows an alert, every script to it waits until someone dismisses it. A tool that times out usually means a dialog is open.

• Pixelmator Pro is sandboxed. The scripts coerce file paths in the way that gives the app a sandbox grant, so files outside ~/Pictures open reliably. super_resolution is always ×3; combine it with resize to hit a target size. remove_background needs a format with transparency (png, webp, heic, tiff) to keep the cut-out.

• Final Cut Pro's scripting dictionary is read-only. Import works through FCPXML; everything else, including File › Export XML, Share/export and the AI features, goes through the ui_* tools.

• Final Cut imports need a library. On current versions an FCPXML import without a target library silently does nothing, so the import tools require libraryLocation. An existing .fcpbundle is used; a new path creates a library. Importing a project whose media is already in the target library can fail with a duplicate-media error; a fresh library avoids it.

• Timelines are frame-accurate. Clip lengths are rounded down to whole frames of the project frame rate. Media lengths come from Spotlight, falling back to AVFoundation for unindexed files; pass durationSeconds per clip to override.

• Numbers CSV export of a file with several tables produces a folder with one CSV per table.

• Compressor output paths should include the extension the chosen setting produces (.mp4, .mov, .m4a, …).

Security

• The server controls apps on your Mac through Accessibility and Apple Events, including pressing buttons and typing into dialogs. Review what your assistant asks it to do.

• Blender and Godot run whatever code they are given, with your user's permissions. Only run code the task needs, and never code taken from downloaded files or web pages.

• Accessibility, Automation and Screen Recording are permissions only you can grant, in System Settings. The server can't grant them to itself.

Rights

You are responsible for having the rights to any source material you rework, such as songs, footage, photos, fonts and models. The skill never stores lyrics.

Privacy

measure_session.py only reads local session logs and writes a local file (~/.studio/learning/ledger.csv). Nothing is uploaded. The server makes no network calls of its own.

Develop

npm test          # unit tests for script generation, FCPXML, paths
npm run inspect   # open the MCP Inspector against the built server
scripts/verify.sh # score the repository against its release checklist

Layout: src/scripts/* build AppleScript (user values are always passed as argv, never pasted into script text), src/fcpxml.ts generates timelines, src/tools/* define the MCP tools, src/index.ts serves them over stdio with @modelcontextprotocol/server 2.x.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.