PodCraft MCP - Live Podcast Research Context Server for Claude and Cursor

Podcast hosts prep for interviews by spending 3 hours reading old episodes and guest bios. PodCraft is an MCP server that ingests your podcast RSS feed, transcribes episodes, and gives Claude or Cursor instant access to your entire show history as searchable context — so you can ask Claude to write episode briefs, generate guest questions, or find contradictions across 200 episodes in 10 seconds.

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Difficulty

intermediate

What is it?

Independent podcast hosts with 50+ episodes have a research problem: their best content is locked inside audio files nobody can search. PodCraft is an MCP server built with the Anthropic MCP SDK that exposes three tools to Claude Desktop: search_episodes (semantic search over transcripts), get_guest_profile (aggregates all mentions of a guest across episodes), and generate_brief (produces a structured interview brief for an upcoming guest based on show history and guest background). It ingests podcast RSS feeds, auto-transcribes via Whisper API, embeds transcripts in a pgvector index, and gives Claude instant retrieval. Target: 50k independent podcast hosts with 50+ episodes who prep manually today.

Why now?

Anthropic's MCP SDK hit stable release in early 2026 and Claude Desktop adoption is accelerating in the creator economy — podcast hosts are exactly the high-information users who already run Claude Desktop daily and would pay instantly for show-history context.

Target Audience

Independent podcast hosts with 50+ episodes — estimated 50k such hosts on Spotify and Apple Podcasts with consistent publishing schedules and no research tooling.

User Stories

▸As a podcast host with 100+ episodes, I want Claude to search my entire transcript archive semantically, so that I can find relevant past discussions in seconds instead of scrubbing through audio.
▸As a podcast host prepping for a guest interview, I want Claude to generate a structured 10-question brief based on my show history and the guest's background, so that I arrive prepared without 3 hours of manual research.
▸As a podcast host, I want new episodes automatically transcribed and indexed when my RSS feed updates, so that my context stays current without manual intervention.

Acceptance Criteria

RSS Ingestion: done when all episodes from a feed are transcribed and indexed in pgvector within 30 minutes of submission. Search Tool: done when search_episodes returns the top 5 semantically relevant transcript chunks for any natural language query in under 2 seconds. Guest Profile Tool: done when get_guest_profile returns a structured summary of all mentions of a named guest across the full catalog. Generate Brief Tool: done when generate_brief produces a 10-question interview brief that references at least 2 specific past episodes.

Is it worth building?

$9/month x 200 active hosts = $1,800 MRR at month 4. $29 setup x 100 new hosts/month = $2,900 additional. Total: ~$4,700 MRR at month 4. Math assumes 1% conversion from podcast host communities on Reddit and Facebook.

Unit Economics

CAC: $10 via r/podcasting organic replies. LTV: $117 ($29 setup + 12 months at $9/month less first month free). Payback: immediate. Gross margin: 87%.

Business Model

One-time setup fee ($29) plus $9/month for ongoing transcription and index updates

Monetization Path

One-time RSS ingestion and Stripe payment unlocks MCP server config. Monthly plan covers new episode transcription.

Revenue Timeline

First dollar: week 2 via setup fee. $1k MRR: month 3. $5k MRR: month 7.

Estimated Monthly Cost

Whisper API: $30, Supabase with pgvector: $25, Vercel (web onboarding): $20, Stripe fees: ~$15. Total: ~$90/month at launch.

Success Metrics

Week 2: 30 beta installs. Month 2: 80 paying hosts. Month 3: 70% monthly active rate on MCP tools.

Launch & Validation Plan

DM 20 podcast hosts on X who post about guest prep struggles, offer free ingestion of their first 20 episodes in exchange for a recorded demo session.

Customer Acquisition Strategy

First customer: reply to threads in r/podcasting where hosts ask about research tools, offer free beta MCP server install with personal onboarding call. Ongoing: r/podcasting, Podcast Movement community, ProductHunt, YouTube tutorial showing Claude writing a full episode brief from RSS feed in 60 seconds.

What's the competition?

Competition Level

Low

What's the roadmap?

Feature Roadmap

V1 (launch): RSS ingestion, Whisper transcription, 3 MCP tools, Stripe setup fee. V2 (month 2-3): auto-update on RSS new episodes, episode clip export, sponsor mention tracker. V3 (month 4+): multi-host team accounts, Spotify API integration, web chat fallback for non-Claude users.

Milestone Plan

Phase 1 (Week 1-2): MCP server with 3 tools working, RSS ingestor and pgvector search functional. Phase 2 (Week 3-4): Stripe onboarding flow, Claude Desktop config generator, 30 beta installs. Phase 3 (Month 2): auto-update pipeline, 80 paying hosts, YouTube demo video live.

How do you build it?

Tech Stack

MCP SDK (TypeScript), OpenAI Whisper API for transcription, pgvector on Supabase for semantic search, Claude Desktop as host, Stripe for one-time setup fee — build with Cursor for all MCP tool logic.

Suggested Frameworks

Anthropic MCP SDK, OpenAI Whisper API, pgvector

Time to Ship

2 weeks

MVP Scope

src/index.ts (MCP server entry), src/tools/searchEpisodes.ts, src/tools/getGuestProfile.ts, src/tools/generateBrief.ts, src/lib/rssIngestor.ts, src/lib/whisperTranscribe.ts, src/lib/pgvectorSearch.ts, scripts/setupDb.sql, README.md with Claude Desktop config snippet.

Core User Journey

Submit RSS feed -> pay $29 -> receive Claude Desktop config snippet -> paste into claude_desktop_config.json -> ask Claude to generate guest brief -> receive structured brief in 15 seconds.

Architecture Pattern

Host submits RSS URL -> ingestor fetches episode MP3s -> Whisper transcribes -> embeddings generated via OpenAI -> stored in pgvector on Supabase -> MCP server exposes three tools -> Claude Desktop calls tools on demand -> results returned as structured context.

Data Model

PodcastFeed has many Episodes. Episode has one Transcript, many EmbeddingChunks. Guest has many EpisodeMentions. EmbeddingChunk belongs to one Episode and has one pgvector embedding.

Integration Points

OpenAI Whisper API for audio transcription, OpenAI Embeddings API for vector generation, Supabase pgvector for semantic search, Anthropic MCP SDK for Claude Desktop tool registration, Stripe for payment, Resend for setup confirmation email.

V1 Scope Boundaries

V1 excludes: multi-host team accounts, video podcast support, Spotify API integration, custom fine-tuning, and web chat fallback UI.

Success Definition

A podcast host installs PodCraft MCP, asks Claude to write a 10-question brief for an upcoming guest, gets a brief that references three relevant past episodes, and sends it to the guest without editing.

Challenges

MCP adoption is still early — many podcast hosts do not yet use Claude Desktop daily, which is required to get value. Must educate on MCP setup in onboarding or provide a fallback web UI for non-Claude users. Distribution to podcast hosts is scattered across 10 different communities with no dominant forum.

Avoid These Pitfalls

Do not ingest entire episode audio in memory — chunk and stream Whisper calls or you will hit timeout limits on long episodes. Do not require technical MCP setup knowledge from hosts — provide a copy-paste config snippet or lose 80% of signups at the install step. Finding first 10 paying customers will take longer than building — budget 3x more time on podcast community presence than on search accuracy tuning.

Security Requirements

Supabase Auth for onboarding web app with Google OAuth. RLS on episodes and embedding_chunks tables. MCP server uses per-host API key stored in environment. Rate limit RSS ingestion to 1 concurrent job per host. Audio files deleted from memory after transcription — never persisted.

Infrastructure Plan

Vercel for Next.js onboarding app. Supabase with pgvector extension for embeddings. MCP server distributed as npm package. GitHub Actions for CI. Sentry for errors. Estimated infra: $60/month at launch.

Performance Targets

200 registered hosts at launch, 500 MCP tool calls/day. Semantic search under 500ms. Episode transcription under 3 minutes per hour of audio. No caching — pgvector queries are fast enough at this scale.

Go-Live Checklist

☐Security audit complete
☐Payment flow tested end-to-end
☐Sentry live
☐Monitoring dashboard configured
☐Custom domain with SSL
☐Privacy policy and terms published
☐5 beta podcast hosts signed off on brief quality
☐Rollback plan: revert npm package version
☐ProductHunt and r/podcasting launch posts drafted.

How to build it, step by step

1. Run npx @anthropic-ai/create-mcp-server podcraft-mcp --typescript to scaffold MCP server. 2. Install openai, @supabase/supabase-js, rss-parser, stripe. 3. Build src/lib/rssIngestor.ts to fetch and parse RSS feed, download MP3 URLs. 4. Build src/lib/whisperTranscribe.ts to chunk audio and call OpenAI Whisper API. 5. Build src/lib/pgvectorSearch.ts to generate embeddings and store in Supabase pgvector table. 6. Implement search_episodes MCP tool with semantic query over pgvector index. 7. Implement get_guest_profile MCP tool that aggregates all transcript chunks mentioning a guest name. 8. Implement generate_brief MCP tool that combines guest profile with Claude prompt to produce structured brief. 9. Build a minimal Next.js onboarding page where hosts submit RSS URL, pay via Stripe, and receive their claude_desktop_config.json snippet. 10. Deploy onboarding app to Vercel, publish MCP server config to npm, test full flow in Claude Desktop.

Generated

April 9, 2026

Model

claude-sonnet-4-6

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