Premiere Pro MCP Server

Premiere Pro MCP Server

An MCP server that drives Adobe Premiere Pro: projects and bins, sequences and their settings, timeline edits, markers, effects, keyframes and transitions, transcripts, metadata and export. It runs on the machine where Premiere Pro is installed and talks to it through a small UXP plugin inside Premiere Pro.

Status: untested against a real Premiere Pro. Every script is checked against Premiere Pro's UXP API reference and run against a stand-in DOM in the tests, but none has been run in Premiere Pro yet. Expect rough edges; see What is not certain yet.

Requires Premiere Pro 25.6 or later (macOS or Windows), the UXP Developer Tool to load the plugin, and Node.js 18 or later.

Why a plugin

Premiere Pro has no outside scripting route the other servers in this repository use: no AppleScript dictionary, no COM object on Windows, and its /C es.processFile command line works only while Premiere Pro launches, returns no result and is unsupported. Adobe's supported way to automate Premiere Pro is a plugin running inside it, and UXP is the plugin platform Adobe is moving to (generally available from Premiere Pro 25.6; CEP stops taking new Marketplace submissions in December 2027 and is removed from December 2029).

A UXP plugin can open WebSocket connections but cannot accept them. So this server listens on 127.0.0.1 and the plugin connects to it:

MCP client --stdio--> adobe-mcp-premiere --ws://127.0.0.1:3011--> MCP Bridge panel (in Premiere Pro)

There is one process to run: the MCP server is also the WebSocket server.

Install

1. Add the server to your MCP client.

   Claude Code:

   bash

   claude mcp add premiere -- npx -y adobe-mcp-premiere

   Any client that reads an mcpServers block:

   json

   {  "mcpServers": {    "premiere": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["-y", "adobe-mcp-premiere"],      "env": { "BRIDGE_TOKEN": "a long random string" }    }  }}

2. Load the plugin in Premiere Pro. Until it is published, load it with the UXP Developer Tool:

   • In Premiere Pro, turn on Developer Mode in the Plugins settings.
   • Install and open the UXP Developer Tool from the Creative Cloud app.
   • Add Plugin and choose uxp/plugin/manifest.json from this package: in a clone, packages/premiere/uxp/plugin; after npm install adobe-mcp-premiere, node_modules/adobe-mcp-premiere/uxp/plugin. premiere_status prints the folder of the copy your server runs from.
   • Click Load, then open the MCP Bridge panel from Premiere Pro's Window menu.

3. In the panel, set the port (3011 unless you changed PREMIERE_WS_PORT) and the token (if you set BRIDGE_TOKEN), and click Connect. The panel remembers both and reconnects every 3 s whenever the connection drops, so it connects again by itself after the MCP server restarts.

4. Ask your client to run premiere_status. It shows the port, whether the plugin is connected, the Premiere Pro version and the active project.

Conventions

• Sequences are chosen with sequence: { name }, { guid } (from list_sequences), or omitted for the active sequence.
• Project items are chosen with item: { id } (from list_project_items), { path: "Footage/Interviews/a.mov" } (bins from the project root), or { name } when only one item has that name.
• Clips in a sequence are chosen with clip: { track, trackIndex, clipIndex }, as list_clips reports them: track is video or audio, indexes start at 0 (track 0 is V1 or A1). Tools that take several clips take clips: { items: [...], selected: true }, where selected adds the clips selected in the Timeline. Indexes shift after edits; list again.
• Effects are chosen by component index and parameter name (or index) from list_clip_effects.
• Times are seconds. Files must be absolute paths inside your home folder or a directory in PREMIERE_ALLOWED_DIRS; tools that write a file refuse to replace an existing one unless you pass overwrite: true.

Tools

help({ tool }) describes any tool's parameters.

Most tools work with Premiere Pro 25.6. These need a later version, and say so in their descriptions: export_timeline (26.2; AAF 26.3), renaming a track (26.3), export_sequence's startQueue and xmp (26.3), the frame rate in set_sequence_settings (26.2), close_sequence (26.2), create_subclip (26.3), positioning the Source Monitor (26.3), the work area in set_sequence_times (26.5), transcribe_clip and clear_media_cache (26.5). On an older version those calls fail with a message transcribe_clip (26.5), listing languages in list_transcription_languages (26.3; checking given codes works earlier). On an older version those calls fail with a message naming the version.

Not offered, because Premiere Pro's UXP API has no call for them: linking and unlinking clips, audio transitions, playing the Program Monitor, clip speed, clip gain (other than the Volume effect's Level), editing caption text, track targeting, nesting, menu commands, undo, Lumetri's Auto button, and Lumetri curves (RGB and Hue Saturation curve points are not simple parameter values).

How it stays out of your way

• One undo step per call. Edits are built inside project.lockedAccess and run with project.executeTransaction, as Premiere Pro requires from 26.3, so each call is one entry in Edit > Undo. The few steps Premiere Pro does not record (playhead, track mute, work area, saving) say so.
• No dialogs. Opening and closing projects turn Premiere Pro's prompts off; importing passes suppressUI.
• One script at a time. The plugin runs scripts in order, never two at once.
• Timeouts say why. If Premiere Pro does not answer within PREMIERE_SCRIPT_TIMEOUT_MS (default 120 s), the error says a dialog may be open. Raise it for long exports and transcriptions.
• No raw input in scripts. Every value a caller passes is validated and written into the script as a JSON literal.

Configuration

Security

• Local only. The server listens on 127.0.0.1, never on other interfaces.
• Token. Without BRIDGE_TOKEN, any program on this machine can connect to the port as the plugin while none is connected (and would then receive the scripts and could answer them), and can send scripts through the HTTP endpoint described below. Set BRIDGE_TOKEN on any machine other people or untrusted software use. With a token, the plugin's first message must carry it (a wrong token closes the connection with code 4001, no message within 5 s with 4002), and the HTTP endpoints require Authorization: Bearer <token>. Tokens are compared in constant time.
• One plugin. While a plugin is connected, any other connection is closed with code 4009, even with the right token.
• No web pages. HTTP requests that carry an Origin header (that is, from a browser page) are refused.
• What the plugin can do. The panel runs whatever the server sends, with the plugin's permissions: the Premiere Pro DOM and network access (the manifest allows all domains because the port is configurable; the plugin itself only connects to 127.0.0.1). It asks for no file-system permission: Premiere Pro reads and writes files itself, at paths the server has checked. execute_premiere_code runs your own code unrestricted.
• The panel stores the token in its localStorage, in plain text.

Two MCP clients at once

Each MCP client starts its own copy of the server, but only one process can listen on the port. The first one listens; a later one finds the port held by another copy of this server (it asks GET /status) and forwards its scripts to it over HTTP (POST /execute, with the token). Scripts from both clients then run one at a time through the one plugin connection. If the first server exits, the next call from the other takes the port over and waits up to PREMIERE_CONNECT_WAIT_MS for the panel, which reconnects within 3 s.

If the port is held by some other program, calls fail with a message saying so: choose another PREMIERE_WS_PORT and set it in the panel too. A second copy with a different token is told the tokens differ.

Inside adobe-mcp-suite the port opens on the first Premiere Pro call rather than at startup.

What is not certain yet

These follow Adobe's UXP reference but have not been seen working in Premiere Pro:

• Project items. Bins are told apart from clips by FolderItem.cast plus a successful getItems(), and sequences by ClipProjectItem.isSequence(). The numeric ProjectItem.type is reported as-is because its values are not documented.
• Moving clips. move_clips passes the offset to createMoveAction, which the reference describes only by its TickTime argument.
• Keyframe times. add_keyframes sets Keyframe.position; whether that is measured from the clip or the sequence is not documented, so use the times list_clip_effects reports.
• Volume. set_clip_volume finds the Volume effect and its Level parameter by their English display names. adjust_clip_audio multiplies Level by the decibel ratio, so it does not depend on how Level maps to dB, and passes pan as Effect Controls shows it (-100 to 100); how the Panner stores it is not confirmed.
• Effects by name. set_clip_transform, fade_clips, copy_clip_effects and set_lumetri_color find effects and parameters by their English display names (Motion, Opacity, Blend Mode, Lumetri Color and its settings). None of the Lumetri names is checked in Premiere Pro, nor the value types of Input LUT, Look, the colour wheels and the HSL Secondary ranges; a name the effect lacks is reported with the names it has. Blend modes are written as their position in the Blend Mode menu (Normal = 0); blendModeIndex takes a raw value.
• Keyframes relative to the clip. jump_to_keyframe, copy_keyframes, copy_clip_effects and fade_clips treat keyframe times as the clip's source time (the In point is the clip's first frame), as ExtendScript does. Whether turning animation on adds a keyframe of its own is not known.
• Source clip effects. Applying or removing them with manage_source_effects is not documented; the tool checks the effect count changed.
• Exported frames. exportSequenceFrame takes a file name and a folder; the server passes the base name and the folder separately.
• Media. Layered files import merged (importFiles has no layer option), and EDL, AAF and FCP XML go through importFiles like any file. modify_footage sets field order and alpha with the FIELD_TYPE_* and ALPHACHANNEL_* values the FootageInterpretation object carries. set_project_media_settings passes a scratch disk folder path where the reference names only the ScratchDiskFolder constants. Search bin queries are passed as given; their syntax is not documented.
• Media Encoder jobs. encode_media passes the range as 0 (whole), 1 (in to out) or 2 (work area), as Adobe's sample does; for a whole file it passes an invalid end time (made by dividing a TickTime by zero, which the reference says returns TIME_INVALID), as the sample passes TickTime.TIME_INVALID.
• Events. What wait_for_event reports about an event is whatever plain values the event object carries; the reference does not describe them.
• Auto-Save copies. recover_project looks for copies named after the project in the Auto Save scratch disk, or in "Adobe Premiere Pro Auto-Save" beside the project when Premiere Pro reports the default symbolically.
• The panel's WebSocket. Whether Premiere Pro's UXP sends an Origin header, and whether a narrower network.domains entry with a port would work, are not known; premiere_status shows the origin it saw.

Please report what you find, with the Premiere Pro version.

ArtCraft (FilmCraft) Support

This server features transparent adapter support for Storytold's FilmCraft nonlinear timeline video editor. When Premiere Pro is not installed or running, or when PREMIERE_TARGET=craft (or ADOBE_TARGET=craft) is set, compatible tools route directly to FilmCraft's loopback bridge protocol (127.0.0.1:9876 by default or FILMCRAFT_CONTROL_PORT).

Development

npm test         # bridge over real sockets, plugin runtime, definitions, arguments, scripts, static auditnpm run audit    # the audit alone, with findings listednpm run check    # syntax check

The audit runs every tool with sample arguments and parses each script it generates; every ppro.<Class>, static member, constructor and ppro.Constants.<Enum>.<VALUE> must exist in tests/fixtures/premiere-uxp-api.json, every other member must be a member of some UXP class or plain JavaScript, and a tool that uses a member added after 25.6 must declare the version it needs. The fixture lists the 67 classes the capability atlas records, with their members and constants from Adobe's UXP for Premiere reference (AdobeDocs/uxp-premiere-pro, Apache-2.0); npm run fixtures regenerates it (see scripts/generate-fixtures.js). tests/fixtures/feature-ids.json lists the atlas feature ids the tools may claim.