Install Postward Creative (local)

What you need

• An MCP-capable assistant: Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI or any other MCP client.
• Docker — the only dependency. The container ships ffmpeg, ImageMagick and fonts pre-installed.
• Generated files persist through a named volume (or bind-mount any local folder you prefer).

Install

1. 1

   One command (Claude Code and Codex CLI)

   Registers the local server with your client. The launcher pulls a newer image when one exists at every start and falls back to the cached one offline.

   CommandCopy

   claude mcp add postward-creative -- sh -c "docker pull ghcr.io/postward-cc/creative-mcp:latest >/dev/null 2>&1; exec docker run -i --rm -v postward-creative-output:/tmp/postward-creative ghcr.io/postward-cc/creative-mcp:latest"

2. 2

   Claude Desktop or Cursor (config file)

   Add this server to your MCP configuration (claude_desktop_config.json or .cursor/mcp.json), then restart the app.

   CommandCopy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "postward-creative": {
         "command": "sh",
         "args": [
           "-c",
           "docker pull ghcr.io/postward-cc/creative-mcp:latest >/dev/null 2>&1; exec docker run -i --rm -v postward-creative-output:/tmp/postward-creative ghcr.io/postward-cc/creative-mcp:latest"
         ]
       }
     }
   }

3. 3

   Verify

   Restart your assistant and point it at any local media file — it calls probe_media and lists everything the server can do.

   CommandCopy

   list_tools

Copy-paste prompt for your assistant

Prefer letting your assistant do the setup? Give it this instruction:

Install the Postward Creative MCP server on this machine. Add an MCP stdio server named "postward-creative" that runs: docker run -i --rm -v postward-creative-output:/tmp/postward-creative ghcr.io/postward-cc/creative-mcp:latest — using my client's standard configuration, then restart and confirm it works by calling list_tools. Files it creates stay on this computer; nothing is uploaded anywhere.

How it works with Postward (optional)

• Your AI assistant edits a file locally (trim, crop, captions, watermark, GIF…).
• When you want AI generation, review, approvals, scheduling or publishing, your agent moves it over: prepare_for_postward locally, then media_create_upload in the Postward MCP — the upload lands in your media library, the one asset source.
• From that point it is ordinary Postward content — hosted Creative can generate with your workspace keys, and everything flows through the governance workflow.