Podcast Index MCP

The open podcast directory for Claude, Cursor, and any other AI agent.

It searches four million podcasts, and then it does the thing the API stops short of: it opens the transcript. Podcast Index hands out a link to an episode's transcript file and goes no further, which is useless to an assistant that cannot click. This fetches the file, works out whether it is SRT, WebVTT, JSON or HTML, and gives you the actual words with timestamps and speakers.

So you can ask when something was said, and get an answer.

There are 36 tools. One free key covers all but two of them.

Built by Navid Moazzez.

Contents

1. What you can ask it 💬

• When did they talk about pricing on that episode, and what did they say?

• Read me this episode and pull out the three claims worth remembering.

• Where has this person been a guest, and what do they always get asked?

• Find me fifteen podcasts about indie games that are still publishing, and skip the dead ones.

• Is my feed broken? Downloads dropped last week and I do not know why.

• What is trending in true crime this week, in Swedish?

• Which of this show's episodes actually have transcripts?

• Who does this podcast split its listener payments with?

• Give me the chapter list so I can see if this episode is worth two hours.

• Tell me everything about this show in one go: cadence, guests, health, the lot.

The first one is the point. Podcast Index will tell you a transcript exists and give you a URL. No podcast tool reads it back to you. This one does, which is why "when did they say that" is a question you can now ask.

2. Quick install ⚡

Node 20 or newer. Nothing else.

npx -y @thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest --version

That is the whole install. npx fetches it on demand, so there is nothing to update later.

3. Setup 🔑

You need a key and a secret. Both. The key says who you are and the secret signs each request, so one without the other cannot authenticate. They are free, there is no approval step, and it takes about two minutes.

Have an agent do it

The agent cannot sign up for you. What it can do is wire up the config once you have the credentials and verify the connection.

Paste this into Claude Code, Cursor, or any agent with terminal access:

Set up the Podcast Index MCP server for me.

1. Open https://api.podcastindex.org/signup and tell me to fill it in. Wait for me.
2. When I paste the key and secret back, add the server to my client config
   with PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY and PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET set.
3. Run the doctor command and tell me what it says.
4. If the clock check fails, tell me how to fix the clock. Do not tell me to
   regenerate the key.

Or do it yourself

Step 1. Go to api.podcastindex.org/signup.

Step 2. Fill in the form. You need an email address and a line about what you are building. There is no review and no waiting: the credentials appear immediately.

Step 3. Copy both values. The key is short and looks like UXKCGDSYGUUEVQJSYDZH. The secret is longer. Keep the secret private: anything holding it can spend your rate limit.

That is it. Everything except adding a podcast to the directory works now.

You do not need write permission. Write access is a separate grant, and 34 of the 36 tools do not use it. Only submit_feed and submit_feed_by_itunes_id need it, and they say so if you call them without it. Skip this unless you actually want to add feeds to the public directory.

To revoke a key, contact Podcast Index through the support links on podcastindex.org.

4. Connect your client 🔌

The long version, every step with what to do when one fails, is in INSTALL.md.

Claude Code

claude mcp add podcastindex \
  -e PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY=your_key \
  -e PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET=your_secret \
  -- npx -y @thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest

Add --scope user to make it available in every project rather than the current one.

Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "podcastindex": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY": "your_key",
        "PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET": "your_secret"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tip Claude Desktop does not inherit your shell PATH, so a bare npx can fail with "command not found". Use the absolute path from which npx if it does.

Quit Claude Desktop completely and reopen it.

claude.ai on the web

claude.ai runs connectors from Anthropic's cloud, not from your machine, so it needs a public HTTPS URL rather than a local command.

npx -y @thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest --http --port 8000

Host that somewhere with a public HTTPS URL and set PODCASTINDEX_HTTP_TOKEN, which the server requires before it will bind anything but loopback. Then in claude.ai: Customize, Connectors, +, Add custom connector, paste the URL, Add.

On Team and Enterprise an owner adds it first under Organization settings, Connectors, then each member enables it.

Cursor

.cursor/mcp.json, same JSON shape as Claude Desktop, key mcpServers.

Windsurf

~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json, key mcpServers.

VS Code

.vscode/mcp.json. The key is servers, not mcpServers, and each entry needs "type": "stdio".

{
  "servers": {
    "podcastindex": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY": "your_key",
        "PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET": "your_secret"
      }
    }
  }
}

Codex CLI

~/.codex/config.toml:

[mcp_servers.podcastindex]
command = "npx"
args = ["-y", "@thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest"]

[mcp_servers.podcastindex.env]
PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY = "your_key"
PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET = "your_secret"

Gemini CLI

~/.gemini/settings.json, key mcpServers, same shape as Claude Desktop.

Everything else

Any stdio MCP client takes the same three things: the command npx, the args, and the env block.

Every setting

Two are required. The rest have defaults that suit almost everyone, and are listed here so nobody has to read the source to find out what is tunable.

5. Check it worked 🩺

npx -y @thenavidm/podcastindex-mcp@latest doctor

podcastindex-mcp doctor

  ok   Node version       v22.14.0
  ok   API key            set, 20 characters
  ok   API secret         set, 40 characters
  ok   Podcast Index API  reachable and authenticated, 4,312,880 feeds indexed
  ok   Clock sync         2 seconds ahead, well inside the 180 second signing window
  ok   Tools registered   36, including 3 that write

Everything checks out.

The clock line is the one to read. See below for why.

6. Tools 🛠️

Reading what is actually in an episode

The group worth installing this for. These leave Podcast Index and fetch files from the publisher's own host.

Questions instead of endpoints

Search

Shows and episodes

What is new and what is moving

Value for value

Health and size

Writes

7. What Podcast Index actually does 🧭

The things that will surprise you, and the reasons this server is shaped the way it is.

A wrong clock looks exactly like a wrong key

This is the one that costs people an hour.

Every request is signed with a SHA-1 of your key, your secret and the current unix timestamp, and Podcast Index accepts a three minute window either side of its own clock. A laptop that slept through a timezone change, a container with no time sync, or a VM restored from a snapshot will fail every single call with a 401.

A 401 reads as "bad credentials" to everybody, so the natural response is to regenerate a key that was never the problem.

doctor measures the drift against the server's own clock and says so. If it reports skew, fix the clock, not the credentials. On macOS:

sudo sntp -sS time.apple.com

Podcasting 2.0 tags are optional, and mostly absent

An empty result is a fact about that show, not a broken call. Nothing here can transcribe audio that was never transcribed, and retrying will not help.

This matters most for guest research. find_guest_appearances only sees shows that publish person tags, so a thin result is a floor on somebody's appearances and never a complete list.

Transcript files lie about their format

The feed declares a mime type and publishers get it wrong constantly: SRT served as text/plain, VTT declared application/json, JSON with an .srt extension.

So this server detects the format from the file body and treats the declaration as a hint. Trusting it would fail on a large minority of real shows.

Where a publisher offers several formats, JSON is preferred, because only the Podcasting 2.0 JSON format carries real speaker names. The same episode as SRT is usually an undifferentiated wall of text. Some SRT and VTT does carry speakers, as a NAME: prefix or a <v Name> span, and those are parsed out.

The transcript is not on Podcast Index

transcriptUrl and chaptersUrl point at files on the publisher's own server. So those tools fail for reasons that have nothing to do with the index: dead links, moved files, HTML error pages, hosts that time out.

When a transcript fetch fails, the podcaster's hosting is down. The index is fine and the call was correct.

A value block is not revenue

It says a show is configured to receive listener payments and names the wallets and their weights. It says nothing about whether anyone has ever paid.

Splits are relative weights, not percentages. A block of 90 and 10 is the same split as one of 9 and 1, so this server shows the computed share alongside the raw number.

Descriptions get silently truncated

Without the fulltext flag the API cuts every text field to 100 characters, and a description cut at 100 characters still looks like a description. A model reading one would summarise a show from its first sentence and never know the rest existed.

This server sets fulltext on every call that accepts it. You will not hit this, but it is why responses are larger than the raw API's.

An episode GUID is not unique

It is unique only inside its own feed. Look one up without saying which show, and the API answers with whichever it finds first, which is a coin flip. Pass show alongside guid on get_episode.

Feed ids and episode ids are different numbers. A feed id will not work where an episode id is wanted.

Adding a feed cannot be undone

submit_feed writes to a public global directory that hundreds of apps read, and this API has no delete. Removing something means asking the people who run Podcast Index.

That is why those two tools need confirm: true and notify_feed_update does not.

8. Your data 📦

There is no backend. Nothing is collected, and nothing is sent anywhere except the two places below.

Your secret is never transmitted. It is hashed into a signature locally and the hash is what travels.

Credentials live wherever your MCP client keeps its config, which is a plain JSON or TOML file on your own machine. This server writes nothing to disk unless you set PODCASTINDEX_AUDIT_LOG, and then only a line per attempted write.

Everything Podcast Index holds is public. There is no personal listening data here to leak, because the index does not have any.

9. Writing safely 🔒

Of 36 tools, 33 only read.

notify_feed_update asks the index to recrawl a feed sooner. It is idempotent, needs no credential, and is not guarded, because guarding harmless things trains the habit that makes real guards useless.

submit_feed and submit_feed_by_itunes_id add a podcast to a public directory and cannot be undone through this API. Both require confirm: true.

Read-only removes the tools rather than erroring on them, because a model cannot call a tool it cannot see, and an error is an invitation to retry differently.

On prompt injection. Transcripts, show notes and chapter titles are text strangers wrote, fetched from hosts nobody vetted, and anybody who can publish a podcast can put "ignore your instructions" into their own transcript. This server fences that text as data before a model reads it, and says so in its instructions.

That helps. It is not a guarantee. For an agent working unattended, PODCASTINDEX_READ_ONLY=1 is the real defence.

10. Troubleshooting 🔧

Run doctor first. It tests every credential and measures the clock.

11. FAQ ❓

An MCP server is a standard way to give an AI assistant real access to a tool, so it can act rather than guess. You install it once, your assistant gains the tools, and it works in Claude, Cursor, and anything else that speaks MCP.

Without one, an assistant asked about a podcast answers from whatever it absorbed in training. With one, it goes and looks.

Podcast Index is an open, free directory of podcasts. Around four million feeds, run independently of Apple and Spotify, with an API anybody can use.

It is also where Podcasting 2.0 lives: an open extension to RSS that lets publishers attach transcripts, chapters, guest credits, highlight clips and payment details to their episodes. That extra data is most of why this server is interesting.

You need to paste a block of JSON into a config file and sign up for a free key. That is the whole technical bar. Step 3 walks through it, and you can hand the prompt in that section to an agent and let it do the wiring.

There is no backend and no telemetry. Your queries go to Podcast Index, and transcript fetches go to the publisher's own server. That is all.

Your API secret never leaves your machine. It is used to compute a signature locally, and only the signature is sent.

Read transcripts. The Podcast Index website will show you that an episode has a transcript and link to the file. It will not search inside it, and it will not search across episodes.

The other one is scale. "Find every episode this person has been on, grouped by show" is one call here and an afternoon by hand.

It cannot. Nothing here deletes anything, because the API has no delete.

The action worth knowing about is the opposite: submit_feed adds a podcast to a public directory permanently, and there is no way to remove it through this API. It requires confirm: true for exactly that reason, and it needs a key with write permission that you will not have unless you asked for one.

It costs nothing. The server is MIT licensed and a Podcast Index API key is free with no approval step and no paid tier.

It works with any client that speaks MCP. Section 4 covers Claude Code, Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Codex CLI and Gemini CLI.

claude.ai is the one that works differently, because it runs connectors from Anthropic's cloud and needs the HTTP transport rather than a local command.

Podcast Index signs every request rather than using a bearer token. The key identifies you and travels with the request; the secret is hashed together with a timestamp to prove the request is yours and is recent.

The upside is the secret is never transmitted. The downside is the timestamp has a three minute window, so a drifting clock breaks everything. doctor checks for it.

Because the publisher did not attach one. Transcripts in podcasting are an optional RSS tag, and most shows do not use it.

Nothing here transcribes audio. If a show publishes no transcript, get_transcript cannot produce one, and it will say so rather than guessing at the content from the show notes.

Remove the entry from your client's config and restart the client. There is nothing installed globally to uninstall, since npx fetches it per run, and nothing on disk to clean up unless you configured an audit log.

Questions

Run into a problem or have a question? Open an issue and I will help.

About the author 👋

Navid Moazzez is a leading AI business strategist, and the host of the AI Creator Summit, watched by 100,000+ creators. He helps creators and founders master AI and build their own AI Operating System (AI OS) to automate their business and life. This Podcast Index MCP server is one piece of that system.

Links

• Personal website: navid.me

• YouTube: @thenavidm and @thenavidai

• X: @thenavidm

• Instagram: @thenavidm

• LinkedIn: thenavidm

If this is useful, star the repo and come say hi on X.

Dependencies

Data comes from Podcast Index, which is free and open. The Podcasting 2.0 namespace defines the transcript, chapter, person, soundbite and value tags this server reads.

Security

Found a vulnerability? Report it privately, not as a public issue. SECURITY.md covers what this server can reach, the write-safety model, and running it over HTTP.

License

MIT. Free to use, modify, and share.

Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Podcast Index LLC.

© 2026 NM Media. Made with ❤️ by Navid Moazzez.