Licensed stock photography, inside the agent workflow
Stock Photo MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that lets AI design agents search commercial stock libraries live, review results on a numbered contact sheet, and place watermarked previews — with the license link and required attribution attached to every image.
Purchases complete on the vendor's site — always.
Live search, no catalog
Every query runs against the vendors' own APIs at request time. Nothing is scraped, stored, or re-hosted.
Compliance in the code path
Watermarked previews until licensed, required attribution on every result, editorial assets excluded — enforced by the server, not the agent.
Built for agents
One numbered contact sheet instead of sixteen URLs: agents compare options visually and pick by badge number, inside the token budgets MCP clients enforce.
Questions
- What is Stock Photo MCP?
- Stock Photo MCP is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that connects an AI design agent to commercial stock-photo libraries. The agent searches for real photography by subject, reviews the results as a numbered contact sheet, and places a watermarked preview into the work with its license link and required attribution attached.
- Who is it for?
- Designers, developers, and teams whose AI assistant — Claude, Cursor, or another MCP client — needs real photography rather than generated or placeholder images. It suits ad, social, landing-page, and deck work where an agent should source a licensable photo without leaving the workflow to hunt for one.
- Can Claude or Cursor search and use stock photos?
- Yes. Connect Stock Photo MCP to Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, or another MCP client, and the agent gains two tools: one to search stock libraries and return a numbered contact sheet, and one to fetch the full watermarked preview of a chosen result for placement in the design.
- How does the agent get licensed photography into a design?
- The agent searches by concrete visual subject, picks a result by its badge number, and places the watermarked preview — carrying the contributor credit — into the layout. When the human approves the design, they license the image through the result's link on the vendor's site. The watermark stays until then.
- Does Stock Photo MCP store, host, or resell the images?
- No. Searches run against the vendors' own APIs at request time; there is no hosted catalog. Stock Photo MCP never sells, delivers, or stores licensed files — every purchase completes on the vendor's site. Only transactional data such as queries, selections, and click events is persisted.
- What does it cost?
- Connecting and searching are free. The images themselves are licensed and paid for on the vendor's site, at the vendor's price. Adpharm earns a commission when a user licenses an image through the tracked affiliate link attached to a result; that commission does not change what the user pays.
- Which stock libraries does it search, and how is licensing handled?
- Shutterstock is live, with an Adobe Stock adapter in development. Licensing terms are enforced in the server's code, not left to the agent: previews stay watermarked until licensed, each vendor's required attribution renders on every result, editorial assets are excluded, and responses are cached no longer than the vendor allows.