prepublish/prepublish-mcp

Audit a YouTube script **before** you record it, from inside your AI client.
Prepublish is a remote MCP server. It reads a draft that does not exist as a
video yet and returns hook, structure and pacing scores, the passages most
likely to lose viewers, an inauthentic-content check, a YouTube policy
pre-flight that cites YouTube's own published pages, and a words-to-runtime
calculator built on measured speaking rates.
Every other YouTube MCP server fetches the transcript of a video that is
already published. This one reads the script you have not filmed.
Free, anonymous, no API key, no account.
Install
**Claude Code**, one command:
**Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Claude Code project scope**, or anything that
reads an mcpServers object:
**Claude Desktop**: add a custom connector under Customize, then Connectors,
and paste https://mcp.prepublish.ai.
**Codex CLI**, ~/.codex/config.toml:
**Clients that can only launch a command** use the stdio bridge in this
repository. It needs Node 20 or newer and forwards to the same endpoint:
Agents installing this on a user's behalf should read
llms-install.md.
Check it worked
Ask for a runtime estimate: *"Use prepublish to convert 1500 words into a
runtime range."* script_runtime is local arithmetic, never rate limited, and
returns three estimates. If that answers, the connection is good.
Tools
| Tool | Cost | What it returns |
| --- | --- | --- |
| audit_script | AI-backed | Full audit of a finished draft: hook, structure and pacing scores, an attention-risk map naming the passages most likely to lose viewers, and a rewrite. Returns the analysis and its id |
| get_audit | free | Collect an earlier audit by analysis_id |
| audit_hook | AI-backed | Per-sentence attention pull across the opening, curiosity gap, payoff distance, a grade, and rewritten alternatives |
| check_authenticity | AI-backed | Reused, templated or mass-produced content risk, with the quotes that fired each signal |
| policy_preflight | AI-backed | Which YouTube policy families a script touches, each citing YouTube's own page |
| script_runtime | free, local | Words to runtime and runtime to a word budget, at 160, 181 and 201 words per minute measured across 349 videos |
audit_script asks for an email address, because the full audit is released by
email. The other five do not.
What it does not do
Every AI-backed response carries the same notice, and it is worth stating here
too. These checks are text-only. They map relative attention risk inside an
unrecorded script. They do not measure or predict the retention a published
video will get, and no output here is a forecast of views, watch time or
revenue.
Nothing fetches a video, a transcript or a channel. Every tool reads text you
pass it.
Limits
The free tier is published live at GET https://mcp.prepublish.ai, which
returns a machine-readable server card with the current day's usage.
| Limit | Default |
| --- | --- |
| AI-backed calls per UTC day, across the whole endpoint | 100 |
| AI-backed calls per caller per 10 minutes | 6 |
script_runtime is local arithmetic and never counts against either.