Piapi MCP Server

Official CLI for the PiAPI platform — call 101 multimodal AI models (image, video, audio, 3D, LLM) from your terminal or AI agent

Local serverstdio

What is the Piapi MCP server?

Piapi MCP server is a locally run integration for AI assistants that speak the Model Context Protocol. Official CLI for the PiAPI platform — call 101 multimodal AI models (image, video, audio, 3D, LLM) from your terminal or AI agent.

What you get

piapi — one binary for 97 multimodal AI models

  • Image — — 37 models incl. flux-dev, nano-banana-pro, qwen-image-edit, seedream-5-pro, midjourney, plus tools (remove-bg, upscale, segment, joycaption, faceswap)
  • Video — — 42 models incl. sora2-pro, kling-3, veo3-fast, wanx22, seedance-2, hailuo, luma
  • Audio — — 11 models incl. mmaudio (video→audio), seed-audio, f5-tts, diffrhythm, udio-music, ace-step
  • 3D — — trellis (text→3D), trellis2 (image→3D), pixal3d (image→3D)
  • LLM — — 8 chat models incl. gpt-4o, claude-sonnet-4.6, gpt-5, plus gpt-image-2 for OpenAI-compatible image generation
  • Streaming — — --stream for token-by-token LLM output; SSE-only models (sora2-preview) stream by default

Setting it up

The server ships on npm as piapi-cli, so your MCP client can launch it on demand — there is no separate build step. Add the server block to your client's configuration, restart it, and the tools register themselves.

What the assistant can call

Once Piapi is connected, these are the calls the assistant has available:

  • Syntax — Meaning

Configuration and credentials

You will need 2 environment variables: PIAPI_API_KEY, PIAPI_BASE_URL. The server will not start without them, which is usually why the tools fail to appear on a first run. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than in a file you might commit.

Before you rely on it

  • It runs with your machine's permissions. That is convenient and also the reason to think about what you point it at before you approve a tool call.
  • Missing credentials fail quietly in some clients — if no tools show up, check the environment block first.
  • MCP clients confirm each tool call by default. Leave that on until you have watched what the piapi mcp server does with a few real requests.

Choosing this one

Plenty of AI and media services servers cover similar ground. The differences that matter in practice are scope of access and how much setup stands between you and a working tool call. Piapi's toolset — Syntax — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by piapi1; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.

We check each listing at SyncDev against the project's documentation before it goes live — if something here drifts out of date, it is a bug worth reporting.

Available tools

ToolWhat it does
SyntaxMeaning

How to install the Piapi MCP server

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "piapi-1": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "piapi-cli"],
      "env": {
        "PIAPI_API_KEY": "your-value",
        "PIAPI_BASE_URL": "your-value"
      }
    }
  }
}

Add to claude_desktop_config.json, then restart Claude Desktop.

Configuration

VariableDescriptionRequired
PIAPI_API_KEYCredential the server authenticates with.Yes
PIAPI_BASE_URLEndpoint or connection string the server talks to.Yes

Example prompts to try

  • Use Piapi to Syntax.

Frequently asked questions

It connects Piapi to MCP-compatible AI assistants such as Claude and Cursor, exposing 1 tool (Syntax) that the assistant can call on your behalf. Instead of copying data back and forth by hand, the assistant works with Piapi directly.