NarrativeGet app
← All articles
News5 min read

Narrative is a connector for Claude

Sign in once and Claude reads your projects, writes the timeline itself or hands a prompt to Narrative’s editor, previews stills, saves and exports. No key, no credits for the edits it writes.

By Narrative•

Narrative is now a connector for Claude. Add it in claude.ai, which covers Claude Desktop and the Claude apps, or in Claude Code, sign in to Narrative once, and Claude can open your projects, read the transcript and the timeline, write a new cut, look at frames of it, save it as a version and export the MP4. Your projects, your footage, Claude at the keyboard.

What Claude can do with it

Everything goes through the same account, ownership and plan checks as the editor; the connector is a different door into the same rooms. Through it Claude can:

  • Find a project and read it. List your projects by name, copy one to work on without touching the original, read its saved timeline and files, the transcript with word timings, the shot boundaries, and frames from the footage at the moments it asks for.
  • Write the edit itself. Claude authors the timeline directly: which clips in which order, trims, speeds, grades, captions and graphics, music and sound items, and changes to the compositions already in the project. Narrative checks the result, renders stills of it for Claude to look at, and saves it as a version only after a preview came back clean. A save is guarded by the version Claude read, so it cannot overwrite a change you made in the editor in the meantime.
  • Or hand it to Narrative’s editor. For a request that wants the full editing agent (“cut this to the beat and caption it in our style”), Claude can pass the prompt to Narrative and watch the progress, exactly as if you had typed it in the chat.
  • Set a reference. Mark one of the project’s videos as the reference to copy, or just its style, the way the reference post describes.
  • Export. Render the saved version and come back with a download link.

The edits Claude writes itself use no Narrative AI credits; a prompt handed to Narrative’s editor uses credits like any chat turn. Your plan or trial applies either way, as do the usual export limits. The connector adds no new allowance and changes nothing about billing.

Where the footage comes from

In claude.ai, the footage is already in the project: upload it in the web editor or from the iPhone app, then ask Claude to work on it. Claude Code is different because it has a shell. Signed in, it can put a file from your disk into a project the way the editor’s own uploader does: it creates the source, sends the speech track first so the transcript starts, then uploads only the stretches the edit actually uses, straight to storage. A two-hour recording never travels whole unless the cut needs most of it.

Setting it up

Narrative uses a pre-registered OAuth client for Claude, so there is no key to copy and no secret to keep. You need a Narrative account and a Claude plan that allows custom connectors.

claude.ai, Claude Desktop and the apps

  1. In claude.ai, open Settings, then Connectors, then Add custom connector.
  2. Server URL: https://api.usenarrative.ai/mcp
  3. Under the advanced options choose to use your own OAuth client. Client ID: 46ebac61-c0ad-4d9f-a7ab-043cab7abd42. Leave the secret empty.
  4. Connect. Narrative’s consent page opens; sign in and press Allow.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http \
  --client-id 46ebac61-c0ad-4d9f-a7ab-043cab7abd42 \
  --callback-port 19877 \
  narrative https://api.usenarrative.ai/mcp

Then type /mcp in a session to sign in through the browser. Sign in interactively once; a headless run cannot finish the login on its own.

The consent page names the client it is approving and only sends the sign-in back to that client’s own registered addresses. The token Claude ends up with is good for the connector alone; it does not open the web app or your account settings. Remove the connector in Claude when you want it gone.

A session, roughly

Open my “board offsite” project. Find where she talks about the second quarter, make a 40-second vertical clip of it with captions, show me two frames, and if they look right save it and export.

Claude lists the projects and picks the one you named, reads the transcript and finds the passage, writes the timeline, asks Narrative for stills at two moments, shows them to you, saves the version, starts the export and returns the link. If something in the stills is off (“the caption covers her face”), you say so and it revises the draft before saving. The same project is open in the web editor the whole time, with every version it saved in the history, so you can take over on the timeline whenever you like.

What it is not

It is not a way around the plan, and it is not a second editor with different rules: a connector edit obeys the same ownership checks, the same readiness gates (footage still uploading is not cut) and the same export prechecks as a click on Export. Claude cannot write new code into a project through this road, only the declarative parts of an edit, which is most of what an edit is. And a preview is a set of stills: for music, timing and motion, watch the result in the editor before you send it anywhere.

Start

Create a Narrative account if you do not have one, add the connector with the steps above, and ask Claude what projects it can see. The first edit on a new account starts a three-day free trial.