@cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server

@cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server

Search movies, TV, and people on The Movie Database (TMDB) — credits, ratings, trailers, images, recommendations, and region-aware streaming availability via MCP. STDIO or Streamable HTTP.

8 Tools • 3 Resources

Tools

Eight tools organized search-before-detail — tmdb_search_titles resolves a name to an integer id, the get_* tools fetch full records, and tmdb_discover_titles / tmdb_get_trending / tmdb_get_watch_providers cover filtered browsing and streaming availability. TMDB keys on integer ids, not titles, so search comes first.

Tool	Description
tmdb_search_titles	Search movies, TV, and people by name. The required first step — resolves a name to the integer id the detail tools consume.
tmdb_get_movie	Full movie detail in one call — synopsis, runtime, genres, US certification, budget/revenue, cast, crew, trailers, recommendations, keywords, external ids.
tmdb_get_show	Full TV show detail — overview, air dates, status, season/episode counts, creators, networks, season summaries, cast, trailers, content rating.
tmdb_get_season	Episode list for one season — names, air dates, runtimes, vote averages, stills, per-episode guest stars, plus the season's regular cast.
tmdb_get_person	Person detail and full filmography — biography, vital dates, the combined_credits cast/crew lists, and cross-platform external ids.
tmdb_discover_titles	Filtered, sorted discovery across movies or TV — the power-query: genre, date/vote ranges, vote-count floor, cast/crew/network, watch providers, runtime, sort.
tmdb_get_trending	Trending movies, TV, or people for the day or week.
tmdb_get_watch_providers	Region-scoped streaming availability (JustWatch) — flatrate/rent/buy/ads/free provider lists plus the TMDB link. A region code is required.

All list and detail responses resolve image *_path fields to full https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/… URLs and resolve genre_ids[] to genre names. Every tool carries the TMDB attribution in its output enrichment.

tmdb_search_titles

Resolve a movie, show, or person name to ranked results with integer ids.

• multi mode (default) mixes movies, shows, and people, each result tagged with media_type; movie/tv/person restrict to one type and enable type-specific ranking
• Optional year filter (movie/tv modes), language override, include_adult toggle, and page for paging past the first 20
• Each result carries id, media_type, title/name, release_year, overview, vote_average, resolved genre_names, and the relevant poster/profile URL
• An empty result set is a valid answer, returned with recovery guidance — not an error

tmdb_get_movie

Fetch full movie detail by TMDB id in a single request.

• Folds credits, videos, recommendations, similar, keywords, external ids, and release dates into one call via append_to_response — trim the append array to shrink the payload (e.g. ["credits"] for cast only)
• US theatrical certification extracted from the release_dates namespace; top-billed cast and key crew (Director/Writer/Screenplay/Producer); YouTube trailers with watch URLs
• Does not include streaming availability — that is region-specific; use tmdb_get_watch_providers

tmdb_get_show

Fetch full TV show detail by series id — the series mirror of tmdb_get_movie.

• Same append_to_response set, with content_ratings (US TV rating) in place of release_dates
• Adds season summaries, creators, networks, and the last/next episode to air
• Pass a season_number from seasons[] to tmdb_get_season for the episode list

tmdb_get_season

Fetch the episode list for one season of a show — bridges the show-level summary and per-episode detail.

• Per-episode names, air dates, runtimes, vote averages, still URLs, and guest stars (embedded per episode)
• Plus the season's regular recurring cast (distinct from per-episode guest stars)
• series_id is echoed from the input — the TMDB season endpoint does not return it. Season 0 is "Specials"

tmdb_get_person

Fetch person detail and the full combined filmography.

• Biography, birth/death dates, place of birth, known-for department, aliases, gender label
• combined_credits split into cast_credits and crew_credits, recency-ordered (most recent first) and capped to a display size — the pre-cap totals are reported and truncation is disclosed in the enrichment
• IMDb id plus the extended cross-platform id set (Wikidata, social handles) for chaining to other servers

tmdb_discover_titles

The power-query — filtered, sorted discovery across movies or TV.

• Filter by with_genres/without_genres, exact year or a release_date_gte/lte window, vote_average range, vote_count_gte floor, with_cast/with_crew (movie), with_networks (tv), with_watch_providers + watch_region, with_original_language, and runtime range
• Sort by popularity, revenue, vote average, vote count, or release date. Pair vote_average.desc with vote_count_gte (~100–1000) so a 10.0-from-3-votes title does not dominate
• with_cast/with_crew are movie-only and with_networks is tv-only on TMDB; the tool accepts them for both media_type values and no-ops the inapplicable ones with a notice
• with_watch_providers requires a watch_region — streaming availability is region-specific. Omitting the region returns a typed region_required error

tmdb_get_watch_providers

Find where a movie or TV title streams in one region.

• Returns flatrate (subscription), rent, buy, ads (ad-supported free), and free provider lists with logo URLs, plus the TMDB JustWatch-backed link — the supported path to actual deep links
• A watch_region (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) is required: availability is region-specific and there is no global answer; the response always carries a region caveat
• An empty result for a region is a valid "not available to stream here" answer, not an error
• Provider ids in the result feed back into tmdb_discover_titles with_watch_providers

Resources

Type	Name	Description
Resource	tmdb://movie/{movie_id}	Movie detail by id, as injectable context — the same enriched record as tmdb_get_movie.
Resource	tmdb://tv/{series_id}	Show detail by id — the same enriched record as tmdb_get_show.
Resource	tmdb://person/{person_id}	Person detail and filmography by id — the same record as tmdb_get_person.

All resource data is also reachable via tools — the three resources are convenience wrappers over the detail service methods, so tool-only clients lose nothing. Search, discovery, trending, and seasons are query paths or intermediate records, not addressable entities, so they have no resources. There are no prompts: this is a data/lookup server with no recurring multi-step interaction template.

Features

Built on @cyanheads/mcp-ts-core:

• Declarative tool and resource definitions — single file per primitive, framework handles registration and validation
• Unified error handling — handlers throw, framework catches, classifies, and formats
• Typed error contracts — every tool declares its failure reasons with recovery guidance for the agent
• Pluggable auth: none, jwt, oauth
• Swappable storage backends: in-memory, filesystem, Supabase, Cloudflare KV/R2/D1
• Structured logging with optional OpenTelemetry tracing
• STDIO and Streamable HTTP transports — runs locally or on Cloudflare Workers from the same codebase

TMDB-specific:

• Single typed client for the TMDB v3 REST API, authenticated with a v4 Read Access Token over Authorization: Bearer
• Image *_path fields resolved to full https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/{size}{path} URLs — null paths omit the field rather than emitting a broken URL
• genre_ids[] resolved to genre names from per-media_type maps cached at startup, so list results carry readable genres without an extra call
• Detail tools collapse credits, videos, recommendations, similar, keywords, and external ids into one HTTP call via append_to_response
• Region-aware streaming availability backed by JustWatch — region is always an explicit input, never assumed

Agent-friendly output:

• TMDB attribution on every response — surfaced in enrichment.attribution so it reaches both the structuredContent and content[] client surfaces
• Provenance and pagination on list responses — total-result counts, page/total-pages, and an effective-filter notice so agents can reason about what was actually queried
• Empty results and empty provider regions return normally with recovery guidance, not as errors — "no titles matched" and "not streamable here" are real answers an agent must act on
• Region and truncation caveats are explicit — watch-provider results always state the region; capped filmographies disclose the pre-cap totals

Getting started

A TMDB API Read Access Token is required. Create a free TMDB account, then copy the API Read Access Token (a v4 JWT) from your API settings — this server authenticates v3 endpoints with Authorization: Bearer <token>, not the legacy ?api_key= query parameter.

Add the following to your MCP client configuration file.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tmdb-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "bunx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info",
        "TMDB_API_KEY": "your-tmdb-read-access-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with npx (no Bun required):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tmdb-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE": "stdio",
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info",
        "TMDB_API_KEY": "your-tmdb-read-access-token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or with Docker:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "tmdb-mcp-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run", "-i", "--rm",
        "-e", "MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=stdio",
        "-e", "TMDB_API_KEY=your-tmdb-read-access-token",
        "ghcr.io/cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server:latest"
      ]
    }
  }
}

For Streamable HTTP, set the transport and start the server:

MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http MCP_HTTP_PORT=3010 TMDB_API_KEY=... bun run start:http
# Server listens at http://localhost:3010/mcp

Refer to "your MCP client configuration file" generically — different clients use different config paths, and this server isn't client-specific.

Prerequisites

• Bun v1.3.2 or higher (or Node.js v24+).
• A TMDB API Read Access Token (v4 JWT) — free from your TMDB API settings.

Installation

• Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/cyanheads/tmdb-mcp-server.git

• Navigate into the directory:

cd tmdb-mcp-server

• Install dependencies:

bun install

• Configure environment:

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env and set TMDB_API_KEY

Configuration

All configuration is validated at startup via Zod schemas. Key environment variables:

Variable	Description	Default
TMDB_API_KEY	Required. TMDB v4 API Read Access Token (JWT), sent as Authorization: Bearer. Not the v3 ?api_key= value.	—
TMDB_LANGUAGE	Default response language as ISO 639-1, optionally with region (e.g. en-US). A per-call language input overrides it.	en-US
TMDB_DEFAULT_REGION	Default ISO 3166-1 country hint used in region-aware error messages. tmdb_get_watch_providers still requires an explicit watch_region.	US
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE	Transport: stdio or http.	stdio
MCP_HTTP_PORT	Port for the HTTP server.	3010
MCP_AUTH_MODE	Auth mode: none, jwt, or oauth.	none
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Log level (RFC 5424).	info
STORAGE_PROVIDER_TYPE	Storage backend.	in-memory
OTEL_ENABLED	Enable OpenTelemetry instrumentation (spans, metrics, completion logs).	false

See .env.example for the full list of optional overrides.

Running the server

Local development

• Build and run:

  # One-time build
  bun run rebuild
  
  # Run the built server
  bun run start:stdio
  # or
  bun run start:http
  

• Run checks and tests:

  bun run devcheck   # Lint, format, typecheck, security
  bun run test       # Vitest test suite
  bun run lint:mcp   # Validate MCP definitions against spec
  

Docker

docker build -t tmdb-mcp-server .
docker run --rm -e TMDB_API_KEY=your-token -p 3010:3010 tmdb-mcp-server

The Dockerfile defaults to HTTP transport, stateless session mode, and logs to /var/log/tmdb-mcp-server. OpenTelemetry peer dependencies are installed by default — build with --build-arg OTEL_ENABLED=false to omit them.

Project structure

Directory	Purpose
src/index.ts	createApp() entry point — registers tools and resources, and primes the startup cache in setup().
src/config	Server-specific environment variable parsing and validation with Zod.
src/mcp-server/tools	Tool definitions (*.tool.ts) — the eight TMDB tools.
src/mcp-server/resources	Resource definitions (*.resource.ts) — movie, TV, and person detail.
src/services/tmdb	TMDB v3 REST client — Bearer auth, retry/timeout, the image/genre startup cache, and the imageUrl/genreNames helpers.
tests/	Unit and integration tests mirroring src/.

Development guide

See AGENTS.md (or CLAUDE.md, the same content) for development guidelines and architectural rules. The short version:

• Handlers throw, framework catches — no try/catch in tool logic
• Use ctx.log for request-scoped logging, ctx.state for tenant-scoped storage
• Register new tools and resources via the barrels in src/mcp-server/*/definitions/index.ts
• Wrap the TMDB API: validate raw → normalize to the domain type → return the output schema; never fabricate missing fields (null poster paths omit the URL, unknown genre ids are dropped)

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Run checks and tests before submitting:

bun run devcheck
bun run test

License

Apache-2.0 — see LICENSE for details.

This product uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Streaming availability data is provided by JustWatch via TMDB and is region-specific.