Gemini Transcription MCP

End of life (2026-11-02). No longer maintained. Succeeded by Transcription-Pipeline, agent skills that call the transcription APIs directly with no MCP server, plus preprocessing, cleanup, speaker labelling, reshaping, PDF and saving stages. What was carried over: docs/prior-art.md.

An MCP server for audio-to-text transcription using Google's Gemini multimodal API.

Quick Start

Claude Code (Recommended)

claude mcp add gemini-transcription -s user \
  -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key \
  -- npx -y gemini-transcription-mcp

Claude Desktop

Add to your claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gemini-transcription": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "gemini-transcription-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "OPENROUTER_API_KEY": "your-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

MetaMCP

Add via the MetaMCP UI or import JSON:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gemini-transcription": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "gemini-transcription-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "OPENROUTER_API_KEY": "your-key"
      },
      "description": "Audio transcription using Gemini models via OpenRouter"
    }
  }
}

Or fill in the Add Server form manually:

Remote Deployment (HTTP Transport)

For deployments that require HTTP transport:

# Using Docker (recommended for remote) - the container listens on 0.0.0.0, so a token is required
docker run -d \
  -p 3000:3000 \
  -e OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key \
  -e MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=a-long-random-string \
  ghcr.io/danielrosehill/gemini-transcription-mcp

# Or run directly with HTTP transport (binds to 127.0.0.1 by default)
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key npx gemini-transcription-mcp --http 3000

The server exposes:

• http://host:3000/mcp - MCP endpoint (streamable HTTP, one server instance per session)

• http://host:3000/health - Health check (never requires auth)

HTTP mode binds to 127.0.0.1 unless MCP_HOST is set. It refuses to start on a non-loopback address without MCP_AUTH_TOKEN, because the tools write files (output_dir) and pull audio over SCP with the server's own SSH keys (ssh_host). With a token set, clients send Authorization: Bearer <token> on every request. Before 0.8.2, HTTP mode listened on all interfaces with no authentication and a second request crashed the process.

Related MCP server: whisper-telegram-mcp

Tools

Input Methods

All tools accept audio via:

• file_content: Base64-encoded audio

• file_url: HTTP(S) URL to fetch

• ssh_host + ssh_path: Pull via SCP (local deployment only)

Supported Formats

• Native: MP3, WAV, OGG, FLAC, AAC, AIFF

• Auto-converted: Opus, M4A, WebM, WMA, and others (converted to OGG/Opus)

Note: When manually converting audio, prefer MP3 over WAV. MP3 offers good compression with broad compatibility, while WAV files are unnecessarily large.

Configuration

Deployment Options

Local (Claude Code, Claude Desktop)

Uses stdio transport. All features available including SSH file retrieval.

# Via npx (recommended)
npx gemini-transcription-mcp

# Or install globally
npm install -g gemini-transcription-mcp
gemini-transcription-mcp

Remote/Docker (MetaMCP, Aggregators)

Uses HTTP transport. Requires container or server with ffmpeg installed.

Docker Compose:

# docker-compose.yml
services:
  gemini-transcription:
    image: ghcr.io/danielrosehill/gemini-transcription-mcp
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    environment:
      - OPENROUTER_API_KEY=${OPENROUTER_API_KEY}

# Create .env file with your API key
echo "OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key" > .env

# Start the service
docker compose up -d

Feature Availability by Deployment Type

* SSH retrieval requires local access to SSH keys and network.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+

• ffmpeg (for format conversion and VAD preprocessing)

• OpenRouter API key

When using Docker, ffmpeg is included in the image.

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/danielrosehill/Gemini-Transcription-MCP.git
cd Gemini-Transcription-MCP
npm install
npm run build

# Run locally
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key npm start

# Run with HTTP transport
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=your-key MCP_TRANSPORT=http npm start

# Build Docker image
docker build -t gemini-transcription-mcp .

License

MIT