stock-image-mcp 0.1.1

MCP server for searching and downloading stock images (Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, Freepik, StockVault, Burst) via LLM tool calls

stock-image-mcp

An MCP server that lets Claude Code (or any MCP-compatible agent) search and download stock images by tool call — useful for sourcing images while writing SEO blog posts or other content.

Providers

Provider	API type	Requires key	Default rate limit
Unsplash	Official	Yes	50/hr demo, 5000/hr production
Pexels	Official	Yes	200/hr
Pixabay	Official	Yes	100 req/60s
Freepik	Official	Yes	configurable (plan-dependent)
StockVault	Official	Yes	configurable (undocumented, conservative default)
Burst (Shopify)	Unofficial scrape	No	self-imposed, polite default

Burst has no public API. It's included as a best-effort HTML scraper, clearly marked unsupported in code — any failure there is caught and reported as an empty result rather than breaking search_all_images.

Install

Each user runs the server locally and supplies their own provider API keys — there's no shared hosting or centrally-held keys.

Add it to your Claude config with uvx (no clone or install step required — uvx fetches the package from PyPI on first run):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stock-image-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["stock-image-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PEXELS_API_KEY": "...",
        "UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY": "..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Any provider env var you omit is simply skipped by search_all_images and rejected if queried directly via search_stock_images — see .env.example for the full list of supported keys.

Tools

• search_stock_images(query, provider="default", orientation=None, per_page=10, page=1)
• search_all_images(query, orientation=None, per_page=5) — fans out to every configured provider concurrently
• get_best_image(query, provider="default")
• download_image(url, dest_path, provider=None) — saves locally, returns attribution text if the image came from a prior search
• get_attribution(provider, image_id)
• get_rate_limit_status(provider=None)

Developing locally

Working from a clone instead of the published package:

uv sync
cp .env.example .env   # fill in the API keys for providers you want enabled
uv run stock-image-mcp

Point your Claude config at the local checkout instead of uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "stock-image-mcp": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["--directory", "/absolute/path/to/stock-image-mcp", "run", "stock-image-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "PEXELS_API_KEY": "...",
        "UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY": "..."
      }
    }
  }
}

Development

uv run pytest              # test suite (mocked HTTP, no live keys needed)
uv run ruff check .         # lint
uv run ruff format .        # format
uv run mypy src             # type check

To try it against real providers, use the MCP Inspector:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uv run stock-image-mcp

Releasing

Publishing to PyPI is handled by .github/workflows/publish.yml, triggered by pushing a v* tag (e.g. v0.1.0). It runs lint/type-check/tests, builds the package, then publishes via PyPI's trusted-publisher (OIDC) flow — no token stored in CI.

One-time setup on PyPI (before the first tagged release): add a "pending publisher" at https://pypi.org/manage/account/publishing/ with PyPI project name stock-image-mcp, repo owner Hasilt, repo name images-mcp, workflow filename publish.yml, and environment pypi. PyPI creates the project automatically on the first successful run of that workflow.