video-research-mcp

Claude Code can't process video. Gemini 3.1 Pro can. This plugin bridges the two -- giving Claude access to Gemini's video understanding, multi-source research, and web search through MCP.

What's in the box

A Claude Code plugin -- not just MCP servers, but a full integration: 45 tools, 17 slash commands, 7 skills, and 7 sub-agents that work together out of the box. The MCP servers provide the tools, the commands give you quick workflows (/gr:video, /gr:research), the skills teach Claude how to use everything correctly, and the agents handle background tasks like parallel research and visualization.

Server	Tools	Purpose
video-research-mcp	28	Video analysis, deep research, content extraction, web search, knowledge store
video-creation	17	Synthesize explainer videos from research — project setup, pipeline, quality, audio, and parallel scene generation (wraps video_explainer + Claude Agent SDK)

Install

npx video-research-mcp@latest
export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-key-here"

One install. One API key. The installer copies 17 commands, 7 skills, and 7 agents to ~/.claude/ and configures the MCP servers to run via uvx from PyPI.

npx video-research-mcp@latest --check     # show install status
npx video-research-mcp@latest --uninstall  # clean removal
npx video-research-mcp@latest --local      # install for this project only

Requires Python >= 3.11, uv, Node.js >= 16, and a Google AI API key.

What it does

Watch a meeting recording

/gr:video-chat ~/recordings/project-kickoff.mp4
> "Create meeting minutes in Dutch. Screenshot every shared screen."

Gemini watches the full video and pulls out timestamps, decisions, and action items. For local files, ffmpeg extracts frames at key visual moments. Files over 20MB are uploaded to Gemini's File API and context-cached -- follow-up questions reuse the cache instead of re-uploading.

Analyze a YouTube tutorial

/gr:video https://youtube.com/watch?v=...

Same capabilities, applied to YouTube. You get precise timestamps, a concept map, and comment sentiment analyzed in the background.

Research a topic with evidence grading

/gr:research "HNSW index parameters for high-dimensional embeddings"

Runs web search and Gemini analysis in parallel. Every finding gets an evidence tier -- Confirmed, Strong Indicator, Inference, or Speculation -- so you know how much weight to give each claim. Results are visualized as an interactive evidence network.

Analyze papers, URLs, or directories

/gr:analyze https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.12345
/gr:analyze ~/papers/attention-is-all-you-need.pdf
/gr:analyze ~/papers/                              # cross-document comparison

Works with PDFs, URLs, and raw text. Extracts entities, relationships, and key arguments. Point it at a directory and it compares all documents in a single pass. Supports PDF, TXT, MD, HTML, XML, JSON, CSV.

Research grounded in source documents

/gr:research-doc ~/papers/
/gr:research-doc paper1.pdf paper2.pdf "Compare methodologies and find contradictions"

Four-phase pipeline: Document Mapping, Evidence Extraction, Cross-Reference, Synthesis. Every claim is cited back to document and page number. Documents are uploaded once and reused across all phases.

Search the web

/gr:search "latest developments in MCP protocol"

Google Search via Gemini grounding with source citations.

Recall what you've learned

/gr:recall                                # overview: stats + saved analyses
/gr:recall "kubernetes"                   # semantic search + filesystem grep
/gr:recall ask "what do I know about X?"  # AI-powered Q&A with source citations

Nothing gets lost. Every analysis and research finding is stored automatically. Weeks later, in a different project, you just ask. When Weaviate is configured, searches use semantic matching -- find "gradient descent tuning" even when you searched for "ML optimization". Without Weaviate, recall falls back to exact keyword grep over saved files.

Use it as a standalone MCP server

The tools are standard MCP. Any MCP client can call them -- no Claude Code required.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "video-research": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["video-research-mcp"],
      "env": { "GEMINI_API_KEY": "${GEMINI_API_KEY}" }
    }
  }
}

Commands

Command	What it does
/gr:video <source>	One-shot video analysis with concept map and frame extraction
/gr:video-chat <source>	Multi-turn video Q&A with progressive note-taking
/gr:research <topic>	Deep research with evidence-tier labeling
/gr:research-deep <topic>	Launch Gemini Deep Research Agent with interview-built brief
/gr:research-doc <files>	Evidence-tiered research grounded in source documents
/gr:analyze <content>	Analyze any URL, file, text, or directory of documents
/gr:search <query>	Web search via Gemini grounding
/gr:recall [filter]	Browse past analyses from memory
/gr:models [preset]	Switch Gemini model preset (best/stable/budget)
/gr:getting-started	Guided onboarding and environment check
/gr:ingest <file>	Import external structured knowledge into Weaviate
/gr:explainer <project>	Create and manage explainer video projects
/gr:explain-video <project>	Generate a full explainer video from project content
/gr:explain-status <project>	Check render progress and pipeline state
/gr:traces [filter]	Query, debug, and evaluate MLflow traces
/gr:doctor [quick|full]	Diagnose MCP wiring, API keys, Weaviate, and MLflow connectivity
/gr:advisor <task>	Get workflow advice — which /gr command fits your task

How a command runs

/gr:video-chat ~/recordings/call.mp4
> "Summarize this meeting, extract action items"

 Phase 1   Gemini analyzes the video
 Phase 2   Results saved to memory
 Phase 2.5 ffmpeg extracts frames (local files only)
 Phase 3   Concepts and relationships enriched
 Phase 4   Interactive visualization generated (opt-in)
 Phase 5   Playwright screenshots it
 Phase 6   Everything copied to output/<slug>/

Visualization and comment analysis run as background agents, so they don't block the conversation.

Output structure

output/project-kickoff-2026-02-28/
├── analysis.md          # timestamped analysis with YAML frontmatter
├── frames/              # extracted video frames (local files)
├── concept-map.html     # interactive visualization
└── screenshot.png       # static capture

Files are also saved to Claude's project memory for /gr:recall.

Tools

video-research-mcp -- 28 tools

Video (4): video_analyze, video_create_session, video_continue_session, video_batch_analyze

YouTube (3): video_metadata, video_comments, video_playlist

Research (8): research_deep, research_plan, research_assess_evidence, research_document, research_web, research_web_status, research_web_followup, research_web_cancel

Content (3): content_analyze, content_batch_analyze, content_extract

Search (1): web_search

Infrastructure (2): infra_cache, infra_configure

Knowledge (7): knowledge_search, knowledge_related, knowledge_stats, knowledge_fetch, knowledge_ingest, knowledge_ask, knowledge_query (deprecated)

Video Creation -- 17 tools

Project (4): explainer_create, explainer_inject, explainer_status, explainer_list

Pipeline (6): explainer_generate, explainer_step, explainer_render, explainer_render_start, explainer_render_poll, explainer_short

Quality (3): explainer_refine, explainer_feedback, explainer_factcheck

Audio (2): explainer_sound, explainer_music

Scene Generation (2): agent_generate_scenes, agent_generate_single_scene

Knowledge store

Connect Weaviate, and everything you learn gets stored -- searchable across projects, across sessions. Without it, the plugin works the same; you just don't get persistent semantic search.

Twelve collections are created on first connection:

Collection	Filled by
ResearchFindings	research_deep, research_assess_evidence, research_document
VideoAnalyses	video_analyze, video_batch_analyze
ContentAnalyses	content_analyze, content_batch_analyze
VideoMetadata	video_metadata
SessionTranscripts	video_continue_session
WebSearchResults	web_search
ResearchPlans	research_plan
DeepResearchReports	research_web_status (reports), research_web_followup (Q&A updates)
CommunityReactions	comment analysis (via /gr:video agent)
ConceptKnowledge	concept extraction from analyses
RelationshipEdges	relationship mapping between concepts
CallNotes	meeting/call analysis notes

Eight knowledge tools let you query this data: hybrid search with optional Cohere reranking, semantic similarity, fetch by UUID, manual ingest, schema introspection, and collection stats. knowledge_ask uses Weaviate's QueryAgent for AI-generated answers with source citations (requires the weaviate-agents package).

# install QueryAgent support
uv pip install 'video-research-mcp[agents]'

To set up Weaviate, run the interactive onboarding or set the vars directly:

/skill weaviate-setup

export WEAVIATE_URL="https://your-cluster.weaviate.network"
export WEAVIATE_API_KEY="your-key"

Configuration

Variable	Default	What it does
GEMINI_API_KEY	(required)	Google AI API key
GEMINI_MODEL	gemini-3.1-pro-preview	Primary model
GEMINI_FLASH_MODEL	gemini-3-flash-preview	Fast model for search and summaries
DEEP_RESEARCH_AGENT	deep-research-pro-preview-12-2025	Interactions API agent for research_web* tools
GEMINI_THINKING_LEVEL	high	Thinking depth (minimal / low / medium / high)
GEMINI_TEMPERATURE	1.0	Sampling temperature
GEMINI_CACHE_DIR	~/.cache/video-research-mcp/	Cache directory
GEMINI_CACHE_TTL_DAYS	30	Cache expiry
GEMINI_MAX_SESSIONS	50	Max concurrent video sessions
GEMINI_SESSION_TIMEOUT_HOURS	2	Session TTL
GEMINI_SESSION_MAX_TURNS	24	Max turns per session
GEMINI_SESSION_DB	""	SQLite path for session persistence (empty = in-memory)
YOUTUBE_API_KEY	""	YouTube Data API key (falls back to GEMINI_API_KEY)
WEAVIATE_URL	""	Weaviate URL (empty = knowledge store disabled)
WEAVIATE_API_KEY	""	Required for Weaviate Cloud
MLFLOW_TRACKING_URI	""	MLflow server URL (empty = tracing disabled)
MLFLOW_EXPERIMENT_NAME	video-research-mcp	MLflow experiment name
EXPLAINER_PATH	""	Path to cloned video_explainer repo
EXPLAINER_TTS_PROVIDER	"mock"	TTS provider: mock, elevenlabs, openai, gemini, edge

Other install methods

Standalone MCP server (no plugin assets)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "video-research": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["video-research-mcp"],
      "env": { "GEMINI_API_KEY": "${GEMINI_API_KEY}" }
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop

Add to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "video-research": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["video-research-mcp"],
      "env": { "GEMINI_API_KEY": "your-key-here" }
    }
  }
}

From source

git clone https://github.com/Galbaz1/video-research-mcp
cd video-research-mcp
uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate && uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
node bin/install.js --global

Development

uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
uv run pytest tests/ -v        # 728 tests, all mocked
uv run ruff check src/ tests/  # lint

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
No API key error	Set GEMINI_API_KEY
429 / quota exceeded	Wait 60s, or switch to /gr:models budget for higher rate limits
Video analysis empty	Video may be private, age-restricted, or region-locked
No frames extracted	Install ffmpeg: brew install ffmpeg
Visualization missing	Ensure Node.js is on PATH (Playwright runs via npx)
Weaviate won't connect	Check WEAVIATE_URL and that the instance is running
Knowledge tools empty	Set WEAVIATE_URL to enable the knowledge store
weaviate-agents not installed	uv pip install 'video-research-mcp[agents]'
MLflow tools unavailable	Set MLFLOW_TRACKING_URI and start mlflow server --port 5001
No traces captured	Ensure MLFLOW_TRACKING_URI is set in the server environment

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup and PR guidelines. See ROADMAP.md for planned work. Report security issues via SECURITY.md.

Author

Fausto Albers -- Lead Gen AI Research & Development at the Industrial Digital Twins Lab, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), in the research group of Jurjen Helmus. Founder of Wonder Why.

Credits

• video_explainer by prajwal-y -- the video synthesis engine behind the explainer pipeline. We extended it with configurable ElevenLabs voice settings, env-based configuration, and MCP tool integration. The original repo is included as a git submodule at packages/video-explainer/.
• Weaviate -- vector database powering the knowledge store. Twelve collections, hybrid search, and the Weaviate Claude Code skill that inspired the knowledge architecture.
• Google Gemini (google-genai SDK) -- Gemini 3.1 Pro provides native video understanding, thinking mode, context caching, and the 1M token window that makes all of this work.
• FastMCP -- MCP server framework. The composable sub-server pattern (app.mount()) keeps 45 tools organized across 3 servers.
• MLflow (mlflow-tracing) -- optional observability. Every Gemini call becomes a traceable span with token counts and latency.
• Pydantic -- schema validation for all tool I/O. Structured generation via model_json_schema().
• Remotion -- React-based video rendering for the explainer pipeline.
• ElevenLabs -- text-to-speech with word-level timestamps for voiceover generation.
• Cohere -- optional reranking in knowledge search for better result relevance.
• Claude Agent SDK -- powers parallel scene generation in video-agent-mcp.

License

MIT