Chutes Media MCP

Chutes Media MCP

Generate image, video, music, and speech through Chutes from any coding agent, with the asset saved straight into the project you are working on.

Chutes Media MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and command-line interface (CLI) that give coding agents access to Chutes media models. It ships as an MCP server on standard input/output (stdio), a thin CLI for agents without MCP support, and a bundled Agent Skill for the describe-then-generate workflow.

Instead of hardcoding a payload per model, the server fetches the model's live schema and validates each request before spending a GPU call, then writes the asset and a provenance record into your workspace. It works with Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, Codex, OpenCode, and Claude Desktop.

This is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Chutes.

Install

Run the server from npm without installing it globally:

npx -y chutes-media-mcp

Install it globally to put both binaries on your path:

npm install -g chutes-media-mcp

Register the server with Claude Code:

claude mcp add chutes-media --env CHUTES_API_KEY=cpk_your_key -- npx -y chutes-media-mcp

For Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, OpenCode, and Claude Desktop, add the mcpServers entry documented in docs/mcp-and-cli.md. Running from GitHub instead of npm is supported with npx -y github:TheStreamCode/chutes-media-mcp. Upgrading from 1.x? See docs/migration-2.0.md.

Quick start

1. Create a Chutes API key at chutes.ai and register the server as shown under Install.
2. Ask your agent for an asset: "Generate a cinematic hero image of a misty mountain range and save it in this project."
3. The agent discovers a suitable model, reads its live schema, validates the payload, and saves the result under assets/chutes/image/. The returned path is ready to reference from your code.

The same describe-then-generate flow is available from a shell through the chutes-media CLI. See docs/mcp-and-cli.md for the tool reference, CLI examples, and image editing.

Features

• Four media kinds (image, video, music, speech), plus image editing when a model exposes an edit cord such as img2img or inpaint.
• Live model contract: cords and input schema are fetched at runtime, never hardcoded.
• Payload validation against the live schema before any GPU call is made.
• Workspace-contained file access; existing assets survive unless overwrite is explicitly set.
• A provenance sidecar per asset with model, cord, params, and schema hash.
• Automatic cold-start retry with backoff for models that scale to zero.
• Progress updates for long video and music jobs.
• One shared core, so the MCP server and the CLI behave identically.

Requirements

• Node.js 20.3 or newer for the published server and CLI. Node.js 20 is end-of-life; use Node.js 22 or 24 LTS in production.
• A Chutes API key.
• Contributors using the locked toolchain need Node.js ^20.19.0, >= 22.13.0, or >= 24.

Configuration

Variable	Required	Default	Purpose
CHUTES_API_KEY	Yes	none	Chutes API key. Read from the environment; never written to disk.
CHUTES_AUTH_SCHEME	No	raw	How the key is sent in Authorization: raw (the key as-is) or bearer (value prefixed with Bearer and a space). On a 401, try the other value.
CHUTES_API_BASE_URL	No	https://api.chutes.ai	Management API base URL. HTTPS is required except for loopback development; custom endpoints never receive the Chutes API key.
CHUTES_OUTPUT_DIR	No	assets/chutes	Output directory inside the agent's working directory. A <kind>/ subfolder is appended.
CHUTES_WARMUP	No	true	Warm models up before invoking them. Set to false to skip warmup.
CHUTES_COLD_START_RETRIES	No	4	Retries when a cold model returns 503 no-instances. 0 disables retries.
CHUTES_COLD_START_BACKOFF_MS	No	8000	Base backoff between cold-start retries; it grows per attempt.
CHUTES_MAX_ASSET_MB	No	512	Maximum response or local input asset size kept in memory. The maximum is 4096.
CHUTES_PROGRESS_INTERVAL_MS	No	5000	How often progress heartbeats are emitted while a call blocks.
CHUTES_ALLOW_UNKNOWN_PARAMS	No	false	When true, accept parameters that are not in the model schema. The default rejects them so a renamed field fails loudly.
CHUTES_PROVENANCE	No	true	Write a <asset>.json sidecar with model, cord, params, and schema hash. Set to false to disable.

Generated assets are saved under ./assets/chutes/<kind>/, relative to wherever the agent runs, so they land inside the project. Output traversal and symlink escapes are rejected, and existing files are preserved unless overwrite is enabled.

Privacy and security

The API key is read from CHUTES_API_KEY and kept in memory. Credential-bearing requests go only to HTTPS Chutes hosts, remote asset URLs are screened against private-network destinations, and file access is contained to the workspace. Query strings and fragments are removed from network-error messages so signed asset URLs do not end up in logs. The project collects no telemetry. See SECURITY.md for reporting.

Troubleshooting

A Chutes request returns 401

The key is missing, invalid, or sent with the wrong authentication scheme. Confirm CHUTES_API_KEY is set for the process that launches the server, then set CHUTES_AUTH_SCHEME to bearer or raw, whichever differs from the current value.

A model returns 503 no-instances

The model is scaled to zero and Chutes has no instance ready. The server retries automatically; raise CHUTES_COLD_START_RETRIES and CHUTES_COLD_START_BACKOFF_MS if the delay is too short, or pick another model of the same kind.

Generation fails with an unknown or rejected parameter

The live model schema changed or the parameter name is wrong. Call describe_media_model again and rebuild the payload from the current schema. CHUTES_ALLOW_UNKNOWN_PARAMS=true is a temporary workaround, not a fix.

An asset write is rejected

Every input and output path must resolve inside the current workspace, and an existing file is not replaced implicitly. Pass the explicit overwrite option (or --overwrite in the CLI) after checking the target path.

Development

Requirements: Node.js ^20.19.0, >= 22.13.0, or >= 24 with npm.

git clone https://github.com/TheStreamCode/chutes-media-mcp
cd chutes-media-mcp
npm ci
npm run check

npm run check runs the format check, lint, type check, coverage tests, and the build. CONTRIBUTING.md covers the Windows path caveat and the opt-in live tests.

Support

Ask usage questions in GitHub Discussions, report reproducible defects in GitHub Issues, and report vulnerabilities privately as described in SECURITY.md.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Pull requests must pass the required CI checks.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Third-party notices are in NOTICE.

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Maintained by Michael Gasperini (Mikesoft). If this project is useful to you, consider sponsoring its maintenance.