Sonilo Music & Sound Effects

Sonilo MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes Sonilo's licensed music and sound-effects API to MCP-compatible clients (Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex).

The flagship tool is `video_to_music`: hand it your finished video and it composes an original soundtrack matched to the cut — the music follows the pacing, emotion, and edits because the model saw them. Length matches the video automatically. Every track is licensed and safe for commercial use (terms apply). text_to_music is also available for fixed-length tracks with no video to match.

For sound design, `video_to_sfx` watches your video and generates matching sound effects, returned as a standalone audio file. text_to_sfx generates a standalone effect from a description.

▶ [Example result](https://github.com/cindyxu1030/sonilo-video-to-music-cookbook/blob/main/assets/demo-trailer.mp4) — an AI-generated trailer with its soundtrack composed by video_to_music from the assembled cut. For recipes covering any AI-video pipeline (stitch → grade → add music → mux), see the Sonilo video-to-music cookbook.

Quickstart with Claude Code

Sign in once with the CLI, then add the server with no secret in the config:

npm install -g sonilo-cli && sonilo login

claude mcp add sonilo -- uvx sonilo-mcp

Or hold an API key yourself — get one from the Sonilo dashboard:

claude mcp add sonilo --env SONILO_API_KEY=sk-... -- uvx sonilo-mcp

Then start a session and ask, e.g. *"Make background music that matches this video: ~/Desktop/promo.mp4."*

Why Sonilo

• Video-to-music — give it a video and Sonilo composes a full-length score matched to its pacing, motion, and emotion. Transitions and beat drops align to your cut points, and the track matches the video's duration exactly — no prompts or manual syncing required.
• Text-to-music — generate tracks from a text description (genre, mood, tempo, instrumentation), at an exact duration (5–360s) or none at all, in which case Sonilo picks a length that suits the prompt.
• Video-to-SFX — Sonilo watches the video and generates sound effects for what it sees. You get the SFX as a standalone audio file. Optional segments let you script effects to specific time ranges ([{start, end, prompt}]).
• Text-to-SFX — generate a standalone sound effect from a description (0.5–180s), in wav, mp3, aac, or flac.
• Proofread before dubbing — proofread transcribes a video and translates the transcript into editable .srt files, one per language plus the source-language transcript. Read and correct the wording, then hand the files to dubbing as subtitles so the dub speaks exactly the approved text — nothing is voiced until you have signed off on it.
• Fully licensed, commercial-safe — music licensed via Shutterstock; every generated track is cleared for commercial use on social, brand content, and advertising, with no Content ID worries.
• Video-to-sound — generate music and sound effects for the same clip in one call, mixed into a single balanced soundtrack. Get back the mixed audio, or a new video with it muxed in.
• Multiple variants per call — text_to_music, video_to_music, video_to_video_music, video_to_sound, and video_to_video_sound accept variants_num (1–10, default 1): generate several distinct creative directions in one request instead of re-rolling one at a time. Cost scales linearly with N, and N > 1 is never covered by the free trial.
• Instrument stems — text_to_music and video_to_music accept stems=true: get the generated track additionally split into drums, bass, vocals and other, at no extra charge. Separation adds a few minutes; on video_to_music it splits the generated music, never the video's own audio.
• Pay as you go — billed only for the seconds of music you generate. Self-serve accounts start with free runs on every endpoint, no card required: 2 each on text-to-music, text-to-sfx, audio-ducking and proofread, and 1 each on video-to-music, video-to-sfx, video-to-video-music, video-to-video-sfx, video-to-sound and video-to-video-sound. After that, calls bill at the normal rate. dubbing gets one free run, a 15-second preview: the first single-language call without subtitles dubs only the first 15 seconds of the video. After that it bills video duration × number of languages (see Free trial below).

Audio Playback Dependencies

The play_audio tool requires PortAudio at runtime (for sounddevice). On macOS/Linux, install via:

• macOS: brew install portaudio
• Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libportaudio2

uvx sonilo-mcp and pip install will pull the Python bindings, but the system PortAudio library must be installed separately. The other tools (text_to_music, video_to_music, text_to_sfx, video_to_sfx, audio_ducking, get_sfx_task, get_account_services, get_usage) work without PortAudio.

Quickstart with Claude Desktop

1. Authenticate, either way round:

• Sign in with the CLI — npm install -g sonilo-cli && sonilo login — and leave "env": {} below. Nothing secret goes in the config file.
• Or get an API key from the Sonilo dashboard and put it in "env".

1. Install the `uv` package manager (provides uvx):

   curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

See the uv repo for other install methods.

1. Go to Claude > Settings > Developer > Edit Config > claude_desktop_config.json to include the following:

   {

"mcpServers": { "sonilo": { "command": "uvx", "args": ["sonilo-mcp"], "env": {} } } }

That is the whole config when you have signed in with sonilo login. To hold a key instead, or to change the defaults:

   "env": {

"SONILO_API_KEY": "sk-...", "SONILO_API_URL": "https://api.sonilo.com", "TIME_OUT_SECONDS": "600" }

1. Restart Claude Desktop. You should see the Sonilo tools available in the tool menu.

Quickstart with Codex

Signed in with the CLI (npm install -g sonilo-cli && sonilo login), the whole setup is one command:

codex mcp add sonilo -- uvx sonilo-mcp

Or, holding a key yourself:

codex mcp add sonilo --env SONILO_API_KEY=sk-... -- uvx sonilo-mcp

To configure it by hand instead:

1. Get your API key from the Sonilo dashboard — or skip this step if you signed in with sonilo login.

1. Install the `uv` package manager (provides uvx):

   curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

1. **Go to Codex > Settings > MCP servers to fill out the following:

Or you can add the server** to ~/.codex/config.toml:

   [mcp_servers.sonilo]

command = "uvx" args = ["sonilo-mcp"]

Omit this whole block when you have signed in with sonilo login.

[mcp_servers.sonilo.env] SONILO_API_KEY = "sk-..." SONILO_API_URL = "https://api.sonilo.com" TIME_OUT_SECONDS = "600"

1. Restart Codex (or start a new session), then run /mcp to confirm sonilo is connected and its tools are listed.

Example usage

Once the server is connected, just ask your assistant in natural language. For example:

• *"Make background music that matches this video: ~/Desktop/promo.mp4."*
• *"Compose music for https://example.com/clip.mp4 with a calm, ambient style."*
• *"I stitched my AI-generated clips into ~/Desktop/trailer.mp4 — add a soundtrack that matches the cut."*
• *"Use Sonilo mcp to generate 30 seconds of upbeat lo-fi hip-hop for a study playlist and save it to my Desktop."*
• *"Use Sonilo to write an epic orchestral cinematic track, about 60 seconds long."*
• *"What Sonilo services and limits does my account have?"*
• *"Show my Sonilo usage for the last 7 days."*
• *"Play the track you just generated."*

The assistant will call the matching tool (text_to_music, video_to_music, text_to_sfx, video_to_sfx, audio_ducking, get_sfx_task, get_account_services, get_usage, or play_audio) and save generated audio to your configured output directory.

Configuration

Authentication

The server takes its key from SONILO_API_KEY if that is set, and otherwise from the credential written by sonilo login (~/.config/sonilo/credentials.json, or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/sonilo/). The environment variable wins on purpose, so any config that already sets it keeps resolving to the same account after an upgrade.

The credential is looked up by the server's own SONILO_API_URL, so a staging server never picks up a production sign-in. This server only ever reads the file: run sonilo login again to renew it (keys from a sign-in expire after 90 days) and sonilo logout to revoke it.

Environment Variables

Some MCP hosts impose their own tool-call timeout and may cut a call off before that wait ends. The task keeps running and is still billed: its id is in the server's stderr log as [sonilo-mcp] task submitted: , and get_sfx_task(" ") retrieves the result — nothing is lost.

File access & confinement

By default, the file tools (video_to_music input, play_audio, and any output_directory) are confined to `SONILO_MCP_BASE_PATH`. Paths that resolve outside it (after symlink resolution) are rejected. This limits the blast radius if a client is tricked into reading or exfiltrating arbitrary files. To opt out — e.g. to read a video from elsewhere on disk — set SONILO_MCP_ALLOW_ANY_PATH=true.

Tools

| `video_to_music(video_path? \| video_url?, prompt?, preserv