Pexafy Stock Photos
VerifiedFeaturedRemoteAbout Pexafy Stock Photos
Pexafy Stock Photos is a hosted MCP server for people creating articles, slides, landing pages, and other content with an assistant. It searches an index of free-to-use stock photos by scene meaning and returns images with licence and credit details.
Key features
- 01Semantic photo search in any language
- 02Search by reference image
- 03Grid selection and similar-photo search
- 04Image files with licence and credit line
- 05Hosted access without an API key
Use cases
- 01Find scene-specific photos for an article
- 02Choose images for slides or a landing page
- 03Search for alternatives based on a reference image
MCP support
Exposes five read-only tools for searching photos, getting image files, retrieving grid selections, and connecting a Pexafy account. It is available to MCP clients over Streamable HTTP.
Configuration
Remote servers need no local install. Pick your client, then copy the config or install in one click.
https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http com-pexafy-pexafy https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp{"mcpServers":{"com-pexafy-pexafy":{"type":"http","url":"https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp"}}}Open in Cursor{"servers":{"com-pexafy-pexafy":{"type":"http","url":"https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp"}}}Open in VS Code{"mcpServers":{"com-pexafy-pexafy":{"type":"http","url":"https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp"}}}{"mcpServers":{"com-pexafy-pexafy":{"serverUrl":"https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp"}}}Run commands in a terminal; paste JSON into the client’s MCP config and restart. Servers that need sign-in will prompt on first connect.
Tools
5| Parameter | Type | Required | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| english_search_sentence | string | Yes | Required. Describe the desired photograph in one concise English sentence, focusing on its visible subject and scene. Be specific: “Two colleagues laughing in a bright open-plan office” is more effective than “People office”. Keywords work too — send the user's own words, in English, rather than inventing detail they did not ask for. Maximum 250 characters. Describe one coherent scene, focusing on what should appear in the photograph rather than its intended use. Specify the requested photo shape or orientation in explicit_orientation_filter, not here. Example: “An old man sitting at a café table he has visited every morning for thirty years”. |
| explicit_orientation_filter | any | No | Omit this parameter unless the user explicitly asks for a photo shape or orientation in their own words, or names a format whose shape is part of its definition — a vertical Short, a banner, a square post, a phone wallpaper. This is a hard filter, not a preference: it removes photos with other shapes before ranking, so using a shape the user did not request can exclude the best matches. Never infer the shape from a word inside `english_search_sentence` — “landscape” in “a natural landscape” names the scene, not the format — nor from the subject, the composition, or a purpose that fixes no shape (“a photo for my blog post”, “something for my landing page”). If you are choosing a value rather than repeating one explicitly requested by the user, omit it. Allowed values: `landscape`, `portrait`, `square`. Multiple values are allowed: two shapes return more than one alone, though any filter still returns less than none. For example, “anything but portrait” means `['landscape', 'square']`. |
Details
From the project README
Ask for a photo the way you would describe it to a person.
Get real, free-to-use photographs back, inside the conversation, credits included.
Ask. Choose together. Put them to work.
🗣️ Ask, in your own wordsTell your assistant what you are working on, the way you would tell a colleague: “I'm writing a short article about Kyoto in autumn. Find photos of a temple garden with red maple leaves.” It writes the search; Pexafy matches the scene, not tags. |
🤝 Choose togetherSixteen photographs come back. Open one large, swipe, heart the keepers, press ≈ for more like it: your picks go back to the assistant, in your order. Or simply answer in words: “the third one, but wider”. |
🚀 Put them to workThe assistant carries on with them: the article with its photos in place, the slide, the landing page, the post. Each photograph keeps its licence and the credit line to display, and comes as an image file when the work needs one. |
With the grid, or without it
| In a chat that draws it | In an agent, a terminal or a script |
|---|---|
| ChatGPT, Claude, VS Code, Cursor. The photographs appear as a grid in the conversation. You see them, open them, like them; the assistant works from what you picked. | Claude Code, Codex, any MCP client. Each result arrives as a link with its licence and credit line. The assistant chooses, fetches the file and places it in your Markdown, HTML, slides or CMS. |
Add it in 30 seconds
| Where | How |
|---|---|
| VS Code | Install in VS Code, or code --add-mcp '{"name":"pexafy","type":"http","url":"https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp"}' |
| VS Code Insiders | Install in VS Code Insiders |
| GitHub Copilot app | Install in the GitHub Copilot app |
| GitHub MCP Registry | Pexafy's page in the registry, with its install buttons |
| ChatGPT | Add Pexafy from ChatGPT's plugin directory |
| Claude | Customize → Connectors → Add custom connector, then https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp |
| Claude Code | claude mcp add --transport http pexafy https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp |
| Codex | codex mcp add pexafy --url https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp |
| GitHub Copilot CLI | copilot mcp add --transport http pexafy https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp |
| Cursor | Add to Cursor |
| Goose, Kiro, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Cline, Zed… | One click or one command each, on pexafy.com/mcp |
| Any MCP client | Streamable HTTP at https://mcp.pexafy.com/mcp |
Zero friction: nothing to install, no API key. Most clients search right away, without an account. When you want your own account, ask the assistant to connect my Pexafy account: it opens Pexafy's sign-in page in your browser (OAuth), and nothing is pasted anywhere. ChatGPT and Claude ask you to sign in once; a free account is enough.
Five tools, all read-only
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
search_photos | Photographs described in one sentence, in any language, optionally only landscape, portrait or square. |
search_photos_by_image | Photographs that look like a picture (a link, an upload) or like a Pexafy photo: “like this, but at night”. |
get_photo_file_by_photo_id | One photograph as an image file, up to 1280 px wide, with its credit line. |
get_grid_selected_photos | The photographs you liked in the grid, in the order you chose. |
connect_account | Links your Pexafy account, right from the conversation. |
Where the photos come from
Pexafy searches its own index of millions of free-to-use photographs, collected from stock libraries such as Unsplash, Pexels and Pixabay. Every photograph is indexed by meaning, so a whole scene in one sentence beats a list of keywords. Each result names its source and licence and carries the credit line to display.
pexafy.com/mcp · Self-host & develop · Changelog · Privacy · MIT licence
ChatGPT, Claude, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and Visual Studio Code are trademarks of their respective owners.
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