MCP servers for Remotion, explained

Short answer: Remotion's own documentation MCP server is deprecated — Remotion now recommends a skill for docs. An MCP server is still worth adding when it gives the agent something docs cannot: a component catalogue it can search, real props, and rendered frames of its own work. snapcn's server does that, for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and other clients, as part of snapcn Pro.

What Remotion offers agents

Per Remotion's AI docs, as of September 2026:

• The Remotion MCP (remotion-documentation) is deprecated. It served the Remotion documentation. The docs note its data "can be less current than the Remotion documentation", recommend migrating to the /remotion-docs skill, and say the hosted MCP will shut down no earlier than August 31, 2026.
• Every docs page as markdown. Append .md to a docs URL, or request it with an Accept: text/markdown header. Agents such as Claude Code fetch the markdown version automatically when given a docs link.
• Agent skills, installed with npx skills add remotion-dev/skills or offered by npx create-video@latest.

So for "how does interpolate() work", a skill is now the answer. An MCP server earns its place only if it does work the agent cannot do by reading.

What an MCP server adds

Docs tell an agent how to animate. They do not stop it improvising the animation, guessing props, or shipping frames it never looked at — the mistakes agents make in Remotion. Tools can:

snapcn_preview is the one that changes results: the agent sees the frame it wrote and fixes it, instead of reporting success on a black screen.

Set it up

You need Node 18 or newer and a snapcn Pro key, from your snapcn account. The key goes in the arguments; there is no env block.

Claude Code

claude mcp add snapcn -- npx -y @snapcn/mcp@latest SNAPCN_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY

Restart the session. Add --scope user before the name to have it in every project.

Cursor — ~/.cursor/mcp.json, or .cursor/mcp.json for one project:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "snapcn": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@snapcn/mcp@latest", "SNAPCN_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY"]
    }
  }
}

Codex

codex mcp add snapcn -- npx -y @snapcn/mcp@latest SNAPCN_API_KEY=YOUR_KEY

VS Code, Windsurf, Gemini CLI, Zed and others are on the MCP page, each with the exact snippet. To check it worked, ask the agent to list the tools: there should be six.

Prompts to try

• "Plan a 20-second launch video for this repo with snapcn. Dark mode."
• "Find a snapcn component that shows our CLI install command running in a terminal."
• "Measure public/demo.mp4 with snapcn and plan a product demo around it."
• "Render frames 30 and 120 of the Video composition with snapcn and fix anything that looks wrong."

Without Pro

Everything the agent installs is still the free, MIT component library via npx shadcn@latest add @snapcn/<name>. Without the server, give the agent the agent skill and snapcn's llms.txt — that covers search and props, just not rendered previews or recording analysis.

Next: making videos with Claude Code and Remotion.

FAQ