Popcorn for AI agents

What you can build

• Original AI-generated short films, ads, and explainers

  Describe the story, audience, or goal — Popcorn writes the script, generates clips, narrates, scores, and edits.

• Reaction videos

  Hand Popcorn a YouTube/TikTok URL and get a host reacting to the clip with original commentary and lip-sync.

• UGC-style talking-head videos

  Use a designed or cloned voice with an avatar host to produce ad-style or testimonial videos.

• Mash-ups and remixes

  Pull clips from 1700+ supported sites (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.) and splice them with newly generated footage.

• Edits driven by scene clipping

  Clip a portion of an existing video by exact time range or by AI-detected scene, then re-narrate, re-score, or re-style it.

• Music videos and AI-scored content

  Generate visuals to fit a track, or generate a custom track to fit visuals — both directions are supported.

Capabilities

• Video generation via Kling, Veo, Sora, Seedance, and HeyGen avatars
• Text-to-speech via ElevenLabs
• Voice cloning and voice design
• Lip-sync for talking-head and avatar shots
• Music generation and licensed background scores
• Auto-generated captions and animated text overlays
• ffmpeg-based composition, transitions, and final render
• Scene clipping by time range or AI-detected scene
• Source-video downloads from 1700+ sites (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, etc.)

Connect via MCP

Popcorn exposes a Model Context Protocol server at:

https://api.popcorn.co/mcp

Option 1 — OAuth one-click (recommended)

Paste the URL into your agent and approve in the browser. No keys to copy.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "popcorn": {
      "url": "https://api.popcorn.co/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Option 2 — API key (bearer token)

Generate a key from your Popcorn profile (avatar → ⋯ → API Keys → Generate key). Keys start with pk_live_.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "popcorn": {
      "url": "https://api.popcorn.co/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_POPCORN_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Per-client setup (Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Zed, Tasklet) lives in the MCP setup guide. Comprehensive product and API docs are at docs.popcorn.co.

MCP tool reference

• create_movie(brief, duration?, orientation?, style?)

  Kicks off a full movie from one brief. Returns an `id` immediately. The movie agent then runs autonomously for several minutes (typically 3–10 min). Be specific in the brief about the format you want.

• get_movie(id)

  Polls a movie. Status is one of `running`, `completed`, `failed`. Poll every 15–30 seconds while running. CRITICAL: if status is `completed` but `video_url` is missing, do not report success — call `send_movie_message` to ask why.

• send_movie_message(id, message)

  Sends a chat message to the movie agent — used to redirect, refine, or recover the run.

• get_movie_messages(id)

  Reads the conversation history with the movie agent for a given movie.

• list_movies()

  Lists movies belonging to the authenticated account.

• get_balance()

  Returns the credit balance available to the authenticated account.

Polling and result contract

1. create_movie returns immediately with an id. The movie agent runs autonomously for 3–10 minutes.
2. Poll get_movie(id) every 15–30 seconds. Status is running, completed, or failed.
3. Critical: if status is completed but video_url is missing or null, the agent stopped before delivering the final video. Do not report success — call send_movie_message(id, "...") to ask why and recover the run.

Example briefs

• 15-second reaction video to https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ — host is upbeat, surprised tone.
• 30s UGC ad for a phone-anxiety app, talking-head style, ElevenLabs voice "Adam", call-to-action at the end.
• 60s explainer about how a transformer attention head works, animated diagrams over a calm narrator.
• 20s mash-up: clip the 1:23–1:43 segment of <youtube-url>, overlay new narration, add captions.

Frequently asked questions