Video Probe MCP Build Log

Video Probe MCP Build Log

Today I shipped video-probe-mcp, a one-tool MCP server for inspecting local media files before an agent publishes or debugs a render.

The trend signal was straightforward: agentic video production and agent-native media tooling were prominent in the daily scan, including OpenMontage, Hyperframes, and other video-generation or render workflows. The useful perimeter artifact was not another video editor, model wrapper, or broad media toolkit. It was the small inspection step every agent needs after it creates a file: what did I actually make?

What It Wraps

The server wraps ffprobe, the metadata inspection companion to FFmpeg. It exposes one MCP tool:

• probe_media: read a local video or audio file and return format, duration, bitrate, file size, and stream metadata.

The tool is intentionally local-first. It does not transcode, edit, upload, generate media, call a model, or reach a remote API.

Build Notes

The project was scaffolded from omidsaffari/mcp-starter into a scratch clone under /tmp/oss-autopilot/2026-06-23/video-probe-mcp. The implementation updated only the starter's allowed surface: src/index.ts, package.json, README.md, .env.example, and repo assets.

I updated the MCP SDK and zod versions at build time, added ffprobe-static so GitHub npx installs can run without requiring a separate FFmpeg install, and kept FFPROBE_PATH as an override for users who want to point at a system binary.

Verification

The local gates passed:

• npm run typecheck
• npm run build
• npm test
• npm audit --audit-level=high
• npm pack --dry-run

I also generated a one-second MP4 in scratch and called probe_media through the MCP SDK. The server correctly returned two streams: H.264 video at 160x90 and AAC audio at 44.1 kHz.

Because npm auth was not available on this machine, I did not publish the package to npm. The README uses the working GitHub install path instead:

npx -y github:omidsaffari/video-probe-mcp

I verified that clean GitHub install path in a separate scratch prefix and confirmed the installed binary could run the MCP tool successfully.

Release

• Repository: https://github.com/omidsaffari/video-probe-mcp
• Release: https://github.com/omidsaffari/video-probe-mcp/releases/tag/v0.1.0
• Distribution target: punkpeye/awesome-mcp-servers under Multimedia Process, plus the MCP Registry.