Connect Claude (MCP)
OpenClip includes a small MCP server, openclip-mcp, inside the app bundle at OpenClip.app/Contents/MacOS/. It speaks stdio and is launched by Claude Desktop or Claude Code on your Mac. Nothing is hosted, and there is no account or API key.
Connect it
In OpenClip, click the Claude button, then either:
- Add to Claude Desktop. OpenClip merges the server into
claude_desktop_config.jsonand keeps a.bakcopy of the original. Restart Claude Desktop afterwards. - Copy the command for Claude Code:
claude mcp add openclip -- "/Applications/OpenClip.app/Contents/MacOS/openclip-mcp"Ask for clips
Open a transcribed project in OpenClip, then in Claude try:
Find the best 5-10 vertical clips in my open OpenClip project.The server also provides a find_clips prompt that does the same thing. Claude saves its picks and they appear live in the app for you to preview, caption and export.
What Claude can call
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
get_candidates | About twenty pre-ranked, sentence-aligned moments, with their text. A few thousand tokens regardless of video length. |
get_transcript | The transcript, when the candidates look weak or you ask about a specific topic or time range. |
save_clips | Saves clips by sentence ids. They appear in the app as soon as they are saved. |
get_clips | Lists the clips in the open project. |
list_projects | Lists the projects it can see. |
A typical run is about 3 to 5 thousand tokens in and under 1 thousand out, in two calls.
Privacy
The server runs locally. Claude receives the candidate text and any transcript it asks for, and that is handled under the assistant's own terms. Prefer to keep every word on your Mac? Use Quick pick, which scores moments locally. See your data.