Cursor
How to let Cursor watch a video
Click Add to Cursor and it writes the MCP server into Cursor's settings. From then on the agent can call watch_video on any link or on a file in the workspace.
Free tier: 60 credits a month, no card. One credit is about a minute of video.
What this changes
The reason this is useful inside an editor is bug reports. Somebody sends a 40-second screen recording of something going wrong; the agent watches it, finds the frame where the UI breaks, reads the error text off the screen, and starts from the line of code that produced it. Without something that can see the recording, that whole chain begins with you writing a description of what you just watched.
Setting it up
- 01
Click the install button
It opens Cursor through a deeplink and adds the server to your MCP configuration. If nothing happens, Cursor is not installed — paste the URL into Settings → MCP instead.
- 02
Sign in
The first tool call opens a browser to approve the connection. It is once per machine.
- 03
Drop a recording into the chat
A path in the workspace or a URL. Ask what happens, and at what second.
Things worth asking it
Each of these produces an answer with a second attached, because the timestamp is burned into the frame the model is looking at — it cannot lose track of when something happened.
- Watch ./bugs/report-441.mov — at what second does the list stop rendering?
- Read the error message visible in this screen recording.
- This design reference clip — describe the transition between the two states, frame by frame.
How closely it looks is a choice
Six levels, picked by the agent from the question. Surveying an hour and reading a single frame of animation are different jobs, and charging the same for both would make one of them pointless.
| Level | Rate | Answers |
|---|---|---|
| overview | 0.5–2 fps | What is this video, start to end |
| standard | 5 fps | What happens when — cuts, overlays, entrances |
| detail | 5 fps | Objects and text blocks, tiles four times larger |
| fine | 10 fps | Type, logos, subtle transitions |
| motion | 30 fps | Animation, easing, dropped frames |
| single | one frame | Reading text at full resolution |
Questions
- Does the deeplink work if Cursor is not open?
- Yes, the OS launches it. If the click does nothing at all, Cursor is not installed on this machine — the server URL is shown on the install page for pasting in by hand.
- Can it read text in a screen recording?
- That is what inspect_frame is for: one frame at 1560 pixels wide, which is the size at which small UI text stays legible to a model. watch_video finds the moment; inspect_frame reads it.
Or somewhere else
One account, every client. The connection is attached to you rather than to a machine, so adding a second one costs nothing.
- ClaudeWeb, desktop and mobile. Opens the connector dialog with the URL filled in.
Claude CodeOne command in the terminal, then /mcp to sign in.
claude mcp add --transport http playhead https://mcp.tryplayhead.com/mcpNo deeplink exists for the terminal, so this is the install.
- ChatGPTNeeds Developer mode under Settings → Connectors → Advanced first.
- VS CodeOpens VS Code and adds the server to your MCP configuration.
CodexAdd the server to Codex's config file.
[mcp_servers.playhead] url = "https://mcp.tryplayhead.com/mcp" auth = "oauth"Append to ~/.codex/config.toml — the CLI, IDE extension and desktop app share it.
- LM StudioAdds the server to LM Studio's MCP list.