Podcast Index MCP Server

[Demo: search_by_person tool call and response]

The results shown in the demo above are sample data, not real Podcast Index responses.

About

Built and maintained by Conor Bronsdon for the Chain of Thought podcast production workflow, where it surfaces guest appearances and checks feed health during research. Conor hosts Chain of Thought, a show about AI infrastructure and how practitioners actually build with it. More tools for creators live in ai-tools-for-creators. Find Conor on X at @ConorBronsdon.

Companion tools:

• Transistor MCP: Transistor.fm's official MCP server. Episodes, publishing, and analytics.
• substack-mcp: read posts and manage Substack drafts
• op3-mcp: report downloads, listener geography, and apps from OP3
• apple-podcasts-mcp: pull plays, followers, and per-episode listening from Apple Podcasts Connect
• gsc-mcp: query search performance, keywords, and sitemaps in Google Search Console
• podcast-benchmark: benchmark a show against its peers using only public data

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Free Podcast Index API credentials -- get them at api.podcastindex.org

Installation

git clone https://github.com/conorbronsdon/podcastindex-mcp.gitcd podcastindex-mcpnpm installnpm run build

Configuration

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{  "mcpServers": {    "podcastindex": {      "command": "node",      "args": ["/path/to/podcastindex-mcp/build/index.js"],      "env": {        "PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY": "your-api-key",        "PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET": "your-api-secret"      }    }  }}

Claude Code

Add to your project's .mcp.json:

{  "mcpServers": {    "podcastindex": {      "command": "node",      "args": ["/path/to/podcastindex-mcp/build/index.js"],      "env": {        "PODCASTINDEX_API_KEY": "your-api-key",        "PODCASTINDEX_API_SECRET": "your-api-secret"      }    }  }}

Tools

This server is entirely read-only: every tool declares the MCP tool annotation readOnlyHint: true, so clients know no call mutates anything and can skip write-consent prompts.

Typed errors

API failures are mapped to a typed error hierarchy (PodcastIndexError base, with AuthenticationError, RateLimitError, ValidationError, NotFoundError, and ServerError subclasses keyed off HTTP status) in src/errors.ts. Every tool call still returns the same isError: true response shape on failure — the typed hierarchy just makes the message specific to what went wrong (bad credentials vs. rate limiting vs. a malformed request, etc.) instead of a single generic "API error" string.

Example Prompts

Once configured, you can ask Claude things like:

• "Search Podcast Index for all episodes featuring Satya Nadella as a guest"
• "What are the trending technology podcasts right now?"
• "Look up the feed health for https://feeds.transistor.fm/chain-of-thought and list the last 5 episodes"

Development

Build the project:

npm run build

Watch for changes during development:

npm run watch

Adding a new tool

1. Add the API method to src/api-client.ts
2. Add type guard and argument types to src/types.ts
3. Add the tool definition and handler to src/tool-handlers.ts
4. Rebuild with npm run build

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. If there is a Podcast Index endpoint you want exposed as a tool, open an issue describing the use case, or follow the steps above and open a PR. Bug reports should include the tool name and the arguments you passed.

Acknowledgments

This server exists because of the free, open Podcast Index API and its documentation — all tools here are thin wrappers over that API.

The expanded endpoint coverage and typed-error design in this release were inspired by Craig Lawton's podcastindex-mcp-server, an earlier MCP server for the same API. No code from that project was used here; this server's implementation, tool schemas, and error-handling code were written independently against the official API docs.

Disclaimer

This is an independent personal project, not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any company. All views expressed are my own.

License

MIT