Skip to content

Quick Start

This guide gets you from zero to a generated podcast episode in about 10 minutes.

Prerequisites

  • A Google Cloud project with billing enabled
  • A Google OAuth 2.0 client ID and secret (create one)
  • The Vertex AI API enabled in your project
  • An MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed, or mcp-remote)

1. Deploy to Cloud Run

The fastest path is deploying via the CI/CD pipeline. Fork the repo, configure secrets in GitHub, and push to main — the Deploy workflow handles the rest.

See Infrastructure → Terraform for the full setup.

After deployment, note your Cloud Run service URL — you'll need it in the next step.

2. Connect an MCP client

Edit ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "the-curator": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["mcp-remote", "https://your-cloud-run-url/sse"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. On first use, a browser window will open for Google OAuth.

Point your client at https://your-cloud-run-url/sse as an SSE MCP server. Consult your client's docs for the exact configuration format.

npx mcp-remote https://your-cloud-run-url/sse

3. Generate a transcript

In your MCP client, call:

Create a podcast transcript about the Voyager probe's journey beyond the solar system.

The server calls Gemini and returns a list of (speaker, text) turns. Review the transcript — edit it if you like — before proceeding.

4. Synthesize the episode

Create a podcast episode titled "Voyager" using the transcript above.

The server synthesizes each turn with Vertex AI TTS, writes a .wav file, and uploads it to GCS. You'll get back a GCS path like episodes/2026-05-16_18-30/Voyager.wav.

What's next?