Premiere-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — Premiere Pro for AI agents

[Premiere-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — Premiere Pro for AI agents]

Premiere-MCP-IMT + SKILLS — Premiere Pro for AI agents

Let an AI assistant (Claude Desktop, Cursor, ChatGPT, Google Antigravity or any MCP client) work inside your running Adobe Premiere Pro: read the project and its sequences, cut, trim, move and ripple clips, apply effects, transitions and keyframes, add markers and captions, reframe, check frames and export — from plain language.

Every Adobe UI language · vision: masks and keyframes by sight · a large skills library · built for generative features. Premiere-MCP-IMT works with every UI language Adobe ships, and the agent sees the frame: it looks at exported frames, draws Object Masks on the people or parts it sees — a click for a whole person, a lasso for a face; add, subtract, track (macOS) — sets speed keyframes (Time Remapping) by dragging them into place on the timeline, and checks keyframed motion frame by frame. Premiere's scripting has no API for masks or speed keyframes; none of the other Premiere MCP servers we compared creates Object Masks, and Adobe's own AI Assistant in Premiere (beta) documents neither. It comes with a large skills library and is built for Adobe's generative features — Generative Extend, Generative Media, Object Mask, Enhance Speech, transcripts and captions, Auto Reframe, Search, the AI Assistant.

Two parts, made to work together:

• The MCP server — about 440 Premiere operations behind nine tools; writes are verified by reading Premiere back; works on every Premiere UI language (verified live); Object Masks by sight on macOS (the masks operations drive Premiere's own mask tool — there is no API for it); no telemetry.
• The skill (skills/pr, also served by the pr_skill tool, so it works in any client) — how to drive Premiere safely, where scripting ends, and how to use Premiere's own AI tools: Generative Extend, the Generative Media Tool (video, sound effects, music), Object Mask, Speech to Text and Paper Edit, captions, Enhance Speech and stem separation, Search, the AI Assistant, Auto Reframe, Scene Edit Detection, Morph Cut — plus recipes that combine them and the gotchas.

Built for localized Premiere, not just English. Most Premiere MCP servers and agent skills assume the English UI — on a German, Chinese or Russian install their effect, transition and parameter names stop matching. Premiere-MCP-IMT finds components by matchName and translates English effect, transition and parameter names through Premiere's own UI dictionaries, so the same agent and the same skill work on all ten UI languages Premiere ships — verified live.

By Immersive Media Technologies.

macOS and Windows · Premiere Pro 2024–2026 — verified live on macOS (26.5) and on Windows 11 ARM (26.5.2, Claude Desktop from the Microsoft Store) · Node.js 20.19+ (none needed with the Claude Desktop extension).

[!CAUTION] This edits real Premiere projects, and scripted undo covers only some edits — work on a copy. Project content (names, transcripts, markers, frames) goes to the AI service you use. Premiere's generative tools spend your Adobe credits; the agent asks before starting one. Raw ExtendScript is off unless you turn it on.

What you can ask for

• "List every clip shorter than 12 frames and every gap in the active sequence."
• "Tighten the pauses in this interview to a third of a second and put a Morph Cut on the jump cuts where the camera is locked off." (skill)
• "Make 9:16 and 1:1 versions of this edit and check the titles stay out of the TikTok UI zones."
• "Blur the face of the man on the left for the whole shot." (macOS: the agent outlines the face with Object Mask itself, tracks it and checks it on other frames; on Windows you click the subject)
• "Mask everyone in this shot, faces first, and keep the mask on them to the end of the clip."
• "The music in this interview was recorded on location — get rid of it and score it again under the dialogue." (skill)
• "Mark every beat of this track and lay the selects to it, two beats per shot."

The agent combines the operations itself and checks the sequence between steps; the skill tells it which Premiere AI tool fits the job, what it costs and where it breaks.

Install

You need Premiere Pro running on this computer and the connector — a small CEP extension inside Premiere that the server talks to. The agent installs it for you on first use (pr_install_connector, it asks first; then quit and reopen Premiere), or the installer below does.

{  "mcpServers": {    "premiere": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "@immersive-media-technologies/premiere-mcp-imt"]    }  }}

From source, with a live self-test (the route we use):

git clone https://github.com/Immersive-Media-Technologies/premiere-mcp-imt.gitcd premiere-mcp-imt && ./install.sh        # Windows: .\install.ps1

The installer checks Premiere, Node and FFmpeg, builds, installs the connector (asks first), asks the running Premiere whether the connector answers, and — after asking — writes the entry into Claude Desktop's, Cursor's and Antigravity's configs, backing them up.

If something does not connect

• pr_verify says the connector does not answer: quit Premiere completely after the connector was installed and open it again; close any open Premiere dialog (a modal dialog blocks scripting). premiere-mcp-imt --diagnose-cep checks the files, the debug flags and Premiere's signature log.
• The connector is unsigned: CEP must allow unsigned extensions (PlayerDebugMode = 1 for CSXS 9–14; on Windows a String (REG_SZ) value under HKCU\Software\Adobe\CSXS.<n>). The installers set it.
• spawn npx ENOENT on macOS: GUI apps do not see your shell PATH — put the absolute path of a Node from Homebrew or nodejs.org in place of npx (nvm's Node is invisible to them).
• Loudness, silence (detect_silence), beat and scene-change analysis need FFmpeg (brew install ffmpeg, winget install Gyan.FFmpeg).
• Windows, Claude Desktop from the Microsoft Store: the Store app's registry writes are sandboxed. If Premiere does not load the connector after pr_install_connector, run powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\install-cep.ps1 once from a normal PowerShell in a source checkout (or use install.ps1).
• premiere-mcp-imt --doctor checks the local install without reading a project.

How it stays safe

How the agent sees

Adobe gives outside agents no picture: its scripting returns a project's structure, not its pixels, and panels have no live access to the Program Monitor (requested since November 2025). Its own connector for AI assistants «operates at Adobe Express level, not Photoshop or Premiere» (MindStudio), and editors who drive Premiere through AI report «no effects or anything more advanced» (Adobe forum).

Premiere-MCP-IMT gives the agent two kinds of sight. The model's: pr_export_frame returns any frame of the sequence as an image, and the model decides from the picture what to mask, where a speed change belongs, whether a keyframed move lands. The server's: Premiere's scripting has no API for masks or speed keyframes — they exist only in its UI. So the server looks at Premiere itself: it captures the window, finds the Program Monitor, the Effect Controls rows and the timeline by their shapes (icons and layout, not labels, so it works on every UI language), acts with real mouse events, and captures again to confirm every step.

Object Masks by sight (macOS): one click of the Object Mask tool on the Program Monitor takes a whole person; a closed lasso takes only the part it outlines (a face, a sign). ⊕ / ⊖ add to or subtract from the mask — the server selects the mask by its row first, because Premiere drops the selection after tracking or a playhead move. Then tracking, Feather, Expansion and the other mask settings; after each edit the server measures the mask's red overlay against the plain exported frame, and the model checks the result frame by frame.

Speed keyframes by sight (Time Remapping, macOS): the server adds a speed keyframe at the playhead in Effect Controls, zooms the timeline until the clip is wide enough to place a frame, finds the keyframe's handle on the clip and Shift-drags it until the measured position matches the target frame — then the model checks the motion on exported frames.

Tools

PR_MCP_FACADE=0 lists every operation as its own tool instead (more than 600K tokens of definitions — beyond most context windows; the nine tools cost about 1.5K).

The skill

skills/pr/SKILL.md is a short router the agent reads first (pr_skill with no arguments); it points to the one reference the task needs (pr_skill {doc}):

Clients with their own skill support can load the folder directly (e.g. copy skills/pr into ~/.claude/skills/).

Why this one

Several Premiere MCP servers exist; they differ in what the model sees, what it knows and what it sends home. As of 2026-11-04 (the vision row re-checked 2026-11-06):

Adobe's own AI Assistant in Premiere (public beta since June 2026) organizes projects and assembles rough cuts; its documentation mentions neither Object Masks nor speed keyframes (checked 2026-11-06).

What we changed in the upstream code, besides the skill and the packaging: component and property lookup by matchName and English names translated through Premiere's own UI dictionaries (on a localized Premiere every opacity, motion, keyframe and volume operation of upstream failed), split_clip that cuts the clip you name (upstream cut track 0), no telemetry, stdio only, and a compact tool surface.

Releases

Each version is described on the Releases page; every change is in CHANGELOG.md.

• v1.3.1 · 2026-11-06 — descriptions name speed keyframes placed by sight next to Object Masks; a «How the agent sees» section.
• v1.3.0 · 2026-11-06 — layer conform: syncing an AI-generated clip with the original plate — cut-only time (pieces slipped by whole frames, conform.py 1.2.0 with refine-cuts), Transform per piece, Levels on the lower clip, the people mask with its edge inside the silhouette; effect-property tools accept property_index alone; Object Mask edit and Time Remap UI fixes.
• v1.2.0 · 2026-11-05 — vision: Object Masks by sight on macOS — the agent clicks a whole person or outlines a part (a face) on an exported frame, adds and subtracts, tracks and checks the red overlay; Premiere has no API for masks.
• v1.1.1 · 2026-10-28 — Premiere's home screen: pr_verify says when no project is open, and an edit tried without a project no longer pauses the edits after it.
• v1.1.0 · 2026-10-28 — built on premiere-pro-mcp 1.26.0: every edit read back from Premiere, about 60 more operations, the UI-language layer carried into the new code; reinstall the connector with pr_install_connector.
• v1.0.2 · 2026-10-28 — descriptions everywhere: every Adobe UI language, a large skills library, built for Adobe's generative features.
• v1.0.1 · 2026-10-28 — product name Premiere-MCP-IMT (was PR-MCP-IMT); the MCP Registry entry also lists the npm package; the package is on npm from 1.0.0.
• v1.0.0 · 2026-10-28 — every Premiere UI language (English names translated through Premiere's own dictionaries; verified live), honest results for unknown effects, colour correction and LUTs, Apache-2.0.
• v0.1.0 · 2026-10-26 — first public release: the Premiere agent skill, nine-tool surface, pr_skill, connector install by the agent, Claude Desktop extension, installers with a live self-test, ChatGPT gateway.

npm test runs offline — no Premiere needed.

License

Apache License 2.0 — © Immersive Media Technologies.

• Free to use, modify and distribute, commercial use included.
• Attribution is required. Every redistribution of this software or of a work derived from it must carry the notice from NOTICE: Premiere-MCP-IMT by Immersive Media Technologies — https://github.com/Immersive-Media-Technologies.
• No warranty.

Third-party notices (upstream MIT code): THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. Adobe, Premiere Pro and Firefly are trademarks of Adobe Inc.; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Adobe.