MCP

HiAPI provides a hosted remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. After connecting, any MCP-compatible client — including Claude Code and Cursor — can call image, video, audio, and text generation tools. Media tools use the Unified Async API, while text tools use OpenAI-compatible text endpoints. No local deployment is required.

https://mcp.hiapi.ai/mcp

The server is stateless about credentials: it never stores your API key, it only forwards the Authorization header of each request to api.hiapi.ai.

Connect

Authentication uses your HiAPI API key as a Bearer token. Create one at Dashboard → API Keys.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http hiapi https://mcp.hiapi.ai/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

JSON config

For clients configured via a JSON file (Cursor, Claude Desktop, and most others):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "hiapi": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.hiapi.ai/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

After connecting, the client discovers the available tools and invokes the corresponding capability, such as an image-generation or product-description request.

Tools

Tool	What it does	Default model
generate_image	Text-to-image, plus reference-image generation on models that support it	qwen-image-2.0
edit_image	Edit or transform an existing image (image-to-image)	nano-banana-2
generate_video	Text-to-video and image-to-video	seedance-2.0
generate_audio	Dialogue speech, music, and other live audio models	elevenlabs/text-to-dialogue
generate_text	Generate text with any live text model; the catalog selects Chat or Responses	deepseek-v4-flash
get_task_status	Check an asynchronous image, video, or audio task by ID	—
list_models	List all live image, video, audio, and text models with capability summaries	—
get_model_capabilities	Per-model parameters: aspect ratios, resolutions, output formats, reference-image limits, durations	—
get_pricing	Live pricing metadata from /api/pricing	—

Image, video, and audio tools create tasks through POST /v1/tasks and poll GET /v1/tasks/:id for up to 3 minutes. For longer generations, pass wait_for_completion: false to get the taskId immediately and check it later with get_task_status or the task detail endpoint. Text models use the live catalog’s /v1/chat/completions or /v1/responses route. generate_text returns a complete JSON response and reports a clear error when stream: true is requested.

Supported models match the live public catalog — see the model pages for exact parameters. New task models appear through generic params passthrough; model-specific fields (for example Seedance reference videos, Wan ratio, FLUX safety_tolerance, or audio lyrics) are documented in get_model_capabilities. Models from a modality without a matching MCP tool are shown separately until support is added.

Output links expire

Task output CDN links expire after about 7 days. Download anything you want to keep.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Fix
401 / 403 from tools	Check the Authorization: Bearer … header in your client config
Balance or quota errors	Add funds at Dashboard → Billing
Tool call times out	The task may still be running — re-run with wait_for_completion: false and poll GET /v1/tasks/:id
Client cannot connect	Verify the URL is exactly https://mcp.hiapi.ai/mcp and the transport is HTTP (streamable)

For model-specific workflows in an agent runtime, install Skills. For product or backend integration, call the Unified Async API directly.