How to Create Videos with Claude Using Renderly's MCP Connector

In December 2025, the Model Context Protocol crossed 97 million monthly SDK downloads and more than 10,000 active servers (Model Context Protocol, 2025). Around the same time, ChatGPT alone passed 800 million weekly users (TechCrunch, 2025). The rails for talking to software through an AI assistant are already laid.

So we laid Renderly onto them. Renderly is now available as an MCP connector — plug it into Claude and you can make videos by typing a sentence.

This guide walks through the whole thing: what the connector is, how to add it in Claude.ai, Claude Code, and Cursor, and how to render your first video — and then a hundred — without ever opening the editor.

Key Takeaways

• Renderly's MCP connector lets you render videos from Claude in plain language — no code, no editor, no new tooling
• MCP is an open standard Anthropic introduced in November 2024; it now has 97M+ monthly SDK downloads and 10,000+ servers (Model Context Protocol, 2025)
• Connect once at https://renderly.video/api/mcp using OAuth or a Renderly API key
• It renders from templates and projects you've already built — ideal for batch, personalized output like real estate or product videos
• Renders use your normal credits (~1 credit per minute of 1080p); the connector is free

What is the Renderly MCP connector?

The Renderly MCP connector is a remote server that exposes Renderly's video rendering as tools any MCP-compatible AI client can call. In plain terms: it lets Claude do things in your Renderly account — list your templates, read their variables, start renders, and fetch the finished video link.

MCP — the Model Context Protocol — is an open standard Anthropic introduced on November 25, 2024 to replace fragmented, one-off integrations with a single protocol (Anthropic, 2024). It's been widely described as a "USB-C for AI": one universal connector instead of a custom adapter for every tool. Renderly now ships one of those connectors.

What makes this credible rather than a gimmick? Every major lab adopted the same standard within a year. OpenAI added MCP support across its products in March 2025 — Sam Altman put it plainly: "People love MCP and we are excited to add support across our products" (TechCrunch, 2025). Google and Microsoft followed the same year, and in December 2025 Anthropic donated MCP to the Linux Foundation's new Agentic AI Foundation.

The short version: MCP is how AI assistants talk to real software in 2026, and Renderly speaks it. For the full setup reference, see the MCP connector guide in our docs.

Why create videos by talking to an AI assistant?

Because the work that used to live in a UI is moving into the chat window. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents by 2026, up from less than 5% in 2025 (Gartner, 2025). If your assistant can already read your email and query your database, asking it to render a video is the obvious next step.

There's a practical reason to do it through Claude specifically. By the end of 2025, Anthropic led enterprise LLM API spend with a 40% share — up from 12% in 2023 (Menlo Ventures, 2025). A lot of teams are already working inside Claude all day. The connector meets them there instead of asking them to switch tabs.

The payoff is speed and scale. Building a personalized video by hand means opening an editor, swapping a headline, exporting, and repeating. Through the connector, you describe the change once and Claude does the repetition. That's the difference between rendering one video and rendering eighty before lunch.

How do you connect Renderly to Claude?

You connect once at a single endpoint — https://renderly.video/api/mcp — and authenticate with OAuth or a Renderly API key. Setup takes a couple of minutes, and the steps differ slightly by client. You'll need an existing Renderly account, since the connector acts as your account.

Claude.ai (web)

Add a custom connector pointing at https://renderly.video/api/mcp, then click Sign in with Renderly.

• On Pro or Max, add it directly under Settings → Connectors.
• On Team or Enterprise, an Owner adds it once under Organization settings → Connectors, and members enable it for themselves. Each person's renders draw from their own account.

Claude Code (terminal)

If you live in the terminal, the fastest path uses a Renderly API key:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user renderly \
  https://renderly.video/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer rnd_YOUR_API_KEY"

Prefer not to use a key? Add it without the header and run /mcp to sign in with OAuth instead:

claude mcp add --transport http --scope user renderly \
  https://renderly.video/api/mcp

Claude Desktop, Cursor, and other clients

Add a custom connector with the same URL and authenticate with OAuth, or supply an Authorization: Bearer rnd_… header. Grab a key from your dashboard under Settings → API Keys — the same place described in our API keys guide.

One thing worth repeating, because it trips people up: sign in with the email that owns your Renderly account. Connect with a different address and the tools simply won't find your library.

How do you render your first video with Claude?

Once connected, you don't memorize commands — you just talk. A first session usually goes: confirm the connection, look at what's available, then render. Try this sequence.

Start by checking the connection and your library:

"What Renderly templates can I use, and what's my credit balance?"

Claude calls renderly_whoami and renderly_list_templates, then shows your account and the available templates. Next, pick something and ask what's editable:

"What can I personalize in my 'Listing Promo' project?"

It reads the project's variables — say address, price, and a background image — and lists them with their current values. Now render:

"Render my Listing Promo with address '123 Ocean Dr', price '$1.2M', and this photo: https://…"

Claude fills the variables, starts the render, and hands back a job. When you want the result:

"Is that render done? Give me the video link."

It polls the job and returns the finished MP4 URL. That's the entire loop — discover, personalize, render, fetch — and you never left the chat. If you'd rather drive this from your own backend instead of a chat window, the same renders are available over our REST API and rendering pipeline.

How do you render personalized videos at scale?

This is where the connector earns its keep. Because Claude can repeat a task across a list, one message can fan out into a whole batch. The demand is real: 63% of video marketers now use AI tools to create or edit videos, up from 51% the year before (Wyzowl, 2026), and 82% say video gives them good ROI. Batch personalization is exactly the job those teams are trying to automate.

Picture a realtor with ten new listings and a "Listing Promo" template. Instead of editing ten videos, they hand the whole batch to Claude in one message:

1. Paste the ten listings — address, price, photo — and ask Claude to render the Listing Promo for each.
2. Claude reads the template's variables once.
3. For every listing, it calls renderly_create_render with the right values, kicking off ten renders.
4. It tracks each job's status.
5. It hands back ten finished video URLs, ready to post.

The same pattern works for product announcements, social cuts, and outreach — anywhere you'd otherwise render one composition many times with different values. It's the conversational version of the workflow in our guide on generating 1,000+ personalized videos with API automation, minus the code.

What can — and can't — the connector do yet?

The v1 connector covers rendering from templates and projects you've already built, with text and media-URL overrides. It exposes six tools your assistant picks from automatically. You won't call these by hand, but it helps to know the surface.

A few things are deliberately not in this release. You can't yet generate a brand-new video from a text prompt, upload local files through the connector, or reach every advanced editor feature. Those are on the roadmap. For now, the sweet spot is personalizing the templates and projects you already have — which is also the highest-volume, most repetitive work. To build those templates in the first place, start with the templates and personalization guide.

Want the no-chat version of all this? Renderly also runs on Zapier, Make, and a REST API — the connector just adds a conversational front door.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Renderly MCP connector? It's a remote MCP server that exposes Renderly's video rendering to any MCP-compatible AI client. Connect it to Claude on web, desktop, or Claude Code, and you can list templates, fill in variables, and render videos in plain language (Model Context Protocol, 2025) — no code required.

Does creating videos through Claude cost extra? No. The connector is free to add. Renders use your normal Renderly credits — roughly 1 credit per minute of 1080p video, rounded up to the nearest 0.5. Your assistant only ever acts as your own account, so renders draw from your existing balance.

Which AI clients work with it? Any MCP-compatible client: Claude.ai on the web, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Cursor, plus other remote-MCP clients. Point them at https://renderly.video/api/mcp and authenticate with OAuth or a Renderly API key.

Do I need to write code to use it? No. The whole point is plain language. You ask Claude to list your projects, then say what to change. API keys are optional and only useful for terminal setups like Claude Code.

Why won't my connection authorize? Usually because you signed in with the wrong email. The connector acts as your Renderly account, so authenticate with the email that owns it. If that email has no account, the tools will tell you to sign up first.

Can I generate a brand-new video from a text prompt yet? Not in this release. The v1 connector renders from templates and projects you've already built. Prompt-to-video, local uploads, and advanced editor features are planned.

MCP went from a single Anthropic announcement to 10,000+ servers and industry-wide adoption in about a year (Model Context Protocol, 2025). Video creation belongs on that list — and now it's there.

If you're already a Renderly user, add the connector and ask Claude to list your templates. If you're new, sign up at renderly.video — you'll get starter credits to test a render — then come back and connect. The full setup reference lives in the MCP connector docs.

Start creating videos with Claude — connect once, then just describe what you want.