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Let your AI tools talk to your music

MacAMP speaks MCP, the open protocol AI apps use to reach tools. Switch it on and the assistant you already use can search your library, suggest playlists for you to approve and, if you let it, press play.

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The External Access section of MacAMP's Intelligence settings with switches to allow AI tools on this Mac to read the library and to let them play and pause music.

What MCP is, in one paragraph

The Model Context Protocol is an open standard that lets AI apps call tools in other programs. MacAMP ships a small MCP server built on the official Swift SDK. When it’s on, an app like Claude Desktop can ask MacAMP things like “what genres do I have?” or “find me fast tracks from the 90s”, and get real answers from your library.

Turn it on

  1. Open Settings › Intelligence and scroll to External Access.
  2. Switch on Allow AI tools on this Mac to read your library. A short sheet explains what that means. Read it and accept.
  3. Point your client at the address shown, http://127.0.0.1:46114 by default.
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "macamp": { "url": "http://127.0.0.1:46114" }
  }
}

For Claude Desktop, that goes in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json. Restart Claude and MacAMP appears in its tools.

What a connected app can do

library tools
10
playback tools, if you allow them
+4
file paths in any result
0
Tool What it does
search_tracks Search by title, artist or album.
list_genres Your library’s own genre vocabulary, with counts.
get_tracks Details for specific tracks.
get_track_features Tempo, energy and brightness, where analysed.
sample_tracks Pick tracks by genre, year, tempo or energy range.
get_listening_stats Your top tracks, artists and genres for a time window.
list_playlists / get_playlist Playlist names and contents.
match_tracks Match a list of songs against your library.
propose_playlist File a playlist proposal for you to review in MacAMP.

Turn on Also let them play and pause your music and four more tools appear: get_playback_state, play_tracks, queue_tracks and transport. Switch it off and they disappear from the list entirely, not just blocked, gone.

Proposals, not changes

The only thing an outside app can write is a proposal. It lands in MacAMP’s Assistant pane and waits for you to review and apply it, the same way the built-in assistant works. Nobody edits your library behind your back.

Testing it

The official MCP Inspector lets you call every tool by hand:

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector http://127.0.0.1:46114

The other direction

MacAMP can also use MCP servers. Add your own under Settings › Intelligence › MCP Servers, and the in-app assistant can call their tools alongside its own when a cloud model is answering.