Reaper MCP server

This MCP server connects a Reaper project to Claude Desktop, allowing you to ask questions about your Reaper projects and receive detailed information based on the project's data.

Installation

To get started with the Reaper MCP server, follow these steps:

Prerequisites

• Make sure you have Claude Desktop installed
• Ensure your Reaper projects are accessible from your local machine

Installation Steps

1. Set up a virtual environment and install dependencies:

uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install .

Configuration

Setting up Claude Desktop

1. Follow the instructions to configure Claude Desktop for use with a custom MCP server
2. Locate the sample config in setup/claude_desktop_config.json
3. Update the following paths in the configuration file:
   • Your uv installation path
   • Your Reaper project directory path
   • The Reaper MCP server directory path

Using the Reaper MCP Server

Available Tools

The server provides two main tools:

• find_reaper_projects: Locates all Reaper projects in your configured directory
• parse_reaper_project: Analyzes a Reaper project file and extracts its data as JSON

Connecting to Claude Desktop

1. Open Claude Desktop on your computer
2. Look for the hammer icon in the bottom right corner of your chat box
3. Click the hammer icon to verify that both Reaper tools are available:
   • find_reaper_projects
   • parse_reaper_project

Asking Questions

To effectively use the Reaper MCP server with Claude:

1. Always specify the name of the Reaper project you're asking about
2. Be specific with your questions about tracks, effects, or project settings
3. You can expand the tool boxes to see the raw project data being passed to Claude

Example Usage

You might ask questions like:

• "What plugins are used in my 'Summer Song' Reaper project?"
• "How many audio tracks are in my 'Podcast Episode 3' project?"
• "What's the BPM setting for 'Band Demo' project?"

The tools will find your project, parse its data, and Claude will provide answers based on the extracted information.

How to install this MCP server

For Claude Code

To add this MCP server to Claude Code, run this command in your terminal:

claude mcp add-json "reaper" '{"command":"python","args":["-m","reaper_mcp_server"]}'

See the official Claude Code MCP documentation for more details.

For Cursor

There are two ways to add an MCP server to Cursor. The most common way is to add the server globally in the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file so that it is available in all of your projects.

If you only need the server in a single project, you can add it to the project instead by creating or adding it to the .cursor/mcp.json file.

Adding an MCP server to Cursor globally

To add a global MCP server go to Cursor Settings > Tools & Integrations and click "New MCP Server".

When you click that button the ~/.cursor/mcp.json file will be opened and you can add your server like this:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "reaper": {
            "command": "python",
            "args": [
                "-m",
                "reaper_mcp_server"
            ]
        }
    }
}

Adding an MCP server to a project

To add an MCP server to a project you can create a new .cursor/mcp.json file or add it to the existing one. This will look exactly the same as the global MCP server example above.

How to use the MCP server

Once the server is installed, you might need to head back to Settings > MCP and click the refresh button.

The Cursor agent will then be able to see the available tools the added MCP server has available and will call them when it needs to.

You can also explicitly ask the agent to use the tool by mentioning the tool name and describing what the function does.

For Claude Desktop

To add this MCP server to Claude Desktop:

1. Find your configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

2. Add this to your configuration file:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "reaper": {
            "command": "python",
            "args": [
                "-m",
                "reaper_mcp_server"
            ]
        }
    }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop for the changes to take effect