How Descript’s API Works with Claude and Zapier (Full Transcript)

[00:01:00] Speaker 1: I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, but this time, I'm going to do it on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, but this time, I'm going to do it on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. I'm going to do the same thing on both sides. the

[00:02:47] Speaker 2: Um, um, um, um, Emily the taste of like, like non chicken nuggets. So, these nuggets are made from chicken, but they're made to emulate the taste of non-chicken nuggets.

[00:03:27] Speaker 1: Dope. Oh, that's much better.

[00:03:29] Speaker 3: Edit all the blather out of your videos, because my time is very precious.

[00:03:34] Speaker 1: Oh, that's fire. Make it less teal and more cerulean? Sure.

[00:03:39] Speaker 3: Replace your background with something more fun? The cold void of outer space.

[00:03:45] Speaker 2: Let's boost that sound quality. Emily, the taste of non-chicken nuggets. Emily, the taste of non-chicken nuggets. Dope.

[00:03:54] Speaker 4: It needs more style. It needs more clips, more gifs, more, more.

[00:04:02] Speaker 1: Well, I might've made it too gnarly.

[00:04:04] Speaker 5: Welcome to our first Descript API Office Hours. I am your co-host, Aaron, joined by Teddy. What's up, Teddy?

[00:04:21] Speaker 6: Hi, nice to be here.

[00:04:23] Speaker 5: We do not have a bunch of slides or a very firm agenda. We want questions, blockers. We're going to show some examples. since we have somebody who's been building this API and testing it, and you're somebody who's either interested in getting it going, or you have been trying it out, we wanna make sure that we can answer any questions you have and go through any workflows or share cool ideas of things you've come up with that maybe we haven't figured out yet. While everybody is coming in, Teddy, what is your favorite use of the API that you've seen so far? whether it's creative or interesting or whatever you want.

[00:05:09] Speaker 6: So there's been a lot of cool API usages I've seen of all ranges. I think one of the most creative I saw was somebody, he basically built a little trivia app using the Descript API where they made their own website and then you're setting up trivia night for your friends to guess a theme songs from televisions of different decades. You select some movies and then the app pulls from YouTube, the movies uses Descript to clip the theme songs and then pipes them back into the trivia app so that you have like a full service game night with your friends. That one's my favorite. And I'm definitely gonna try that one out myself a lot. I also really like, there's been a lot of cat video generators from people's personal Google Drive and Dropbox folders of all their cat videos. Those have been pretty good.

[00:06:03] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the Trivia Night app is a great idea. I haven't seen that one, which is part of the fun of an API, right? It's people's creativity and imagination is one of the few limits on there. If you're somebody who's joining us, we'd love to know in the chat, YouTube, LinkedIn, wherever you're watching from, have you generated an API key? Have you tried a project? Just where you're at with using the Descript API because you joined today for some purpose. So whether it's been successful or you're just curious, you know, what could I even do with this? Let us know in the chat. And then of course, as we're going through questions, have us repeat something, show it again, a use case. We are pretty much running and gunning today and we have Gabe in the chat from support. So if you need links to documentation or anything like that, shout out to Gabe. He's ready to go and we will keep track all of those. So Teddy, I say let's rock and roll for the people that are here. Where should we start with the API? Like how do I get into that and what would be a couple of use cases someone would have for it?

[00:07:15] Speaker 6: Yeah, that sounds great. I can give, I'll give a few demos today. First of how to set it up with Cloud, which I think is the easiest. And then also how you can use the API with Zapier, which is really powerful because both Claude and Zapier can connect all of your other stuff from your Google Calendar and Google Drive, your other apps, all the way to Descript and help you make videos of all those connections.

[00:07:41] Speaker 5: Yeah, awesome. Well, let's jump in and start with the recommended path.

[00:07:46] Speaker 6: Okey-doke. So here I've got Claude open and what we're gonna do is from the sidebar, you should see you have this customize window. This is where in Cloud you can connect any kind of app that is supported as an MCT in Cloud. So I'm gonna click customize here, and then I'm going to click this connectors bar in this middle tab. And then from here, one thing to note is that because we're still beta, we're not listed in this list. We're gonna be what's called a custom connector. So you'll click this little plus button over here. and select Add Custom Connector. What you'll need to do here is give it both a name. I'm going to name it Descript because that's what the connector is, and then this Remote MCP Server URL. This URL is going to look like this. If you're like, where did you get that URL, Teddy? It's in our Help Center docs over here on how to set up the API, if you unfurl this little plot tab. But anyway, so back to Claude, then it should be as simple as clicking add. And now you'll see that I have a Descript MCP in here Claude. And then what you'll want to do is you'll click connect here. And this will take you to a web browser tab to actually sign in with your Descript account. One thing to note is that the Descript drive that you are currently logged in and have selected is what will be accessed here. So if you have multiple Descript drives, you want to make sure that you have the current drive that you want to use Cloud on selected. So I'm going to allow, and then it'll take me back to Cloud. Here, just like with any other connection you use with Cloud or GPT, you can select how much approval you want Cloud to have. If you're somebody who you want Cloud to ask you every time before it makes any adjustments. You can just have needs approval, or if you're happy to let Claude drive the wheel, you can also just click always allow. That part's entirely up to you. You do need to have it at minimum at needs approval in order for the MCP to work properly. And then once I have all that set up, making a video in Descript should be as simple as me just typing it into chat. So I can say, make me a two minute Descript video about whether hot dogs are sandwiches. And what we should see right now, ooh, I'm not allowed to use that model apparently. So let's try a different one. Okay, now we're doing something. Okay, so now we should see that Claude will actually recognize that Descript is a tool it's connected to, and you can see here it's contacting Underlord, and it's making a request to Underlord to create a project, and then it's gonna start editing the project.

[00:11:02] Speaker 5: Yeah, so just by mentioning Descript in your very simple prompted new, hey, I have these tools in this connection that I can use.

[00:11:10] Speaker 6: Yeah, exactly. And so what we should actually see now is if I go to web.descript.com in my projects, I should actually see this project was just created by Claude, our hotdog sandwiches. And I can watch here, Claude and Underlord do their thing as Claude works on the project. So yeah, that's how easy it is to get set up with the Claude MCP for our Descript API. And then we also, you can similarly use that same MCP URL and open AI's docs for custom connectors. If your LLM of choice is chat GPT, it's basically the same steps. I'm just demoing cloud here because that's what I personally use.

[00:11:59] Speaker 5: Yep, as long as you have that link that Teddy showed for the MCP, I used it on chat GPT for the first time and it connected and worked great. So a use case from the chat on YouTube, let's just throw this one up because we're somewhat answering this. This would be an example where Teddy doesn't have a recording or any kind of media. It's starting a project via a cloud chat, whether that's writing the transcript with it, generating avatars, AI video, essentially anything Underlord can do in the app, you can do via cloud now, is that correct?

[00:12:37] Speaker 6: Yes, and if there is something that you're noticing works in Underlord in the app, but doesn't work in Cloud, that's actually really good feedback to give us because we want there to be as much parity between the two as possible. And so if something's not working in the MCP, please let us know so that we can fix that.

[00:12:58] Speaker 5: Yep, and then here's a great follow-up question from the same user. What if they're in the Google ecosystem?

[00:13:04] Speaker 6: If you're in the Google ecosystem, I personally have not tried that, so I don't know. I would check and see if Google allows you to have custom connectors.

[00:13:17] Speaker 5: Yep, and I do know Perplexity does not support this yet. As of last week, we had a user ask, but my virtual Bible tour, if you're using, let's say, Gemini CLI, you could. Basically, if your tool supports a web hosted MCP, and the fun part about this, you don't really have to know, just give it the link that Teddy showed us from our documentation and say, hey, can you use this?

[00:13:45] Speaker 6: Yeah. And I'll throw the link up just so we can see it.

[00:13:50] Speaker 5: Yep. This link over here. Yep. Gabe is also putting that in the chat if you would like a direct link to the, it looks like Gemini documentation. I'm pretty sure Gemini can use web hosted MCPs, it's just, it's not as easy as Claude with the little search or the marketplace, but it should be possible. And we'd love to know, go try it and tell us, comment on one of our social posts or DM one of us and we'll confirm that. Yeah, I'm certain Google Gemini and the CLI would work.

[00:14:28] Speaker 3: Mm-hmm, yeah.

[00:14:31] Speaker 6: And one of my favorite things and the reason I actually really like using the Descript API connected to Cloud or even just any LLM is because I'm not that great at prompting Underlord personally, but Cloud is really good at telling Underlord what to do. And so I feel like I personally get better output because I can communicate, I guess the game of telephone of me communicating to Claude, communicating to Underlord somehow ends up coming out better than when I just try to talk to Underlord myself because I'm not so good at like figuring out all the great prompts, but I think the LLMs know how to talk to each other and like Claude knows how to look up our API docs and all this other stuff that I don't always have at top of mind, but Claude can just look it up and use it to make better requests to Underlord.

[00:15:22] Speaker 5: Yeah. And I'd add another reason I like this is you can start a project and save all of your Descript API uses in one folder. I think GPT calls it folders, Cloud calls it projects. And then you can reference past things you've done or pick up where you left off.

[00:15:39] Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:40] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:15:41] Speaker 6: Okay.

[00:15:42] Speaker 5: Here's another good question. What's about the purpose of the API? Is it enhancing what Underlord can do or is it to start a project in Cloud versus go to Descript on the desktop or in your web browser?

[00:16:02] Speaker 6: That's a really great question. I think that the real goal of the API and the MCP is what we hear from our users a lot is I have all this stuff that I want to work with, with Descript, whether I have lots of recordings living in my Google Drive, or I want Underlord to be able to access these other things in my ecosystem, like these GitHub pull requests and make explainer videos on them. And so the real goal here is to empower our users by giving you more tools to connect Descript with other things so that you can bring more stuff into your videos and make it more meaningful. We definitely are not trying to make it so that you never have to go in Descript in-app again, but the idea is that if you're somebody who you love to brainstorm and get a rough draft done through Claude, and then you can go to Descript for that last 10% and zhoosh things up, make it look really nice. And the idea is bringing everything you work with together.

[00:17:08] Speaker 1: Yeah.

[00:17:09] Speaker 5: Elisa, that's a great question. And part of the fun is you have to help us answer it. But from one of our other users, Let's Use Three Centers on YouTube, when they checked in today, I'm going to assume that they have these 180 reels in a Dropbox or a Google Drive. Somehow it's posted in the cloud. Teddy, what are your thoughts on a use case for this? I need to put captions and basically create clips from the 180 raw video files.

[00:17:41] Speaker 6: I think this is actually a great use for the Descript API, whether you want to do it through Cloud or I can also move to the Zapier demo and show that, that might also be a good target for that. Or if you're someone who feels comfortable using a CLI in your terminal, we can also support that. This is actually one of the main use cases we want to support is that we know a lot of our users have just so much video and footage that they want to use. And how do we bring that into Descript more easily and then make it easier for you to get done what you want to get done, whether it's making social media clips, applying captions, or translating your videos?

[00:18:22] Speaker 5: Yeah, I say let's do the Zapier demo. And we'll just pretend. I don't think we have 180 files, but we'll pretend if you're three tenors, you could do this same thing that Teddy's going to show. Then if someone in chat right now is like, I'm a CLI person, I want to be in the terminal, how would I get that set up or what would that look like? Let us know in the chat while Teddy demos this next entry point.

[00:18:46] Speaker 6: Yes, that sounds great. So moving to Zapier, so one thing is because we're still in beta, if you want to use Descript API in Zapier, You'll want to go to our Help Center documents for connecting to the API and use this link to accept our invitation to use the Descript app in Zapier since it's a beta app still. So just a flag about that. But once I'm in Zapier, here's an example Zap I've made that's pretty simple. So my initial trigger is I have a Google Drive folder over here for my Zapier imports, and I've set this Google Drive up, this Google Drive trigger, such that any time there's a new file in this folder, something will happen. So once we do that, just like any other Zapier Google Drive step, you can configure the exact folder you want pulled from, you want subfolders, anything else here, and we'll just go ahead with this test file example. But then the exciting part is now that I have something that triggered, I can take an action step using Descript API. So we have two actions here. You can import media and you can edit project with API. So import media, for example, would take these files pulled from my Google Drive step and import them into Descript. And I can do that either by importing into a new project or importing into an existing project, whichever is my preference. And then one thing is you will need to, over here in the account section, specify what Descript account you want used for that. And when you do that, you'll see something like this. If I click connect new account, where it's gonna ask you for an API key, Where you get that is by going to web.dscrypt.com. And then in your settings here, you should see an API token section. And you would create a new token over here and name it whatever you want. And then each token is specific to the dscript drive that it's selected for. So for example, if I made a token with dscriptHQ selected, Zapier would only create projects in DescriptHQ. But if I select Teddy's Drive, then Zapier will only create projects or be able to work with projects in Teddy's Drive. But once you've gone through that token creation process and in Zapier you've pasted it in, then I'll just select this again. Oops. Yes. From here, because I have an import media step, let's see if Zapier's gonna work for me.

[00:21:53] Speaker 5: And while that's working, just as a follow-up, three centers who has these 180 clips, it's the same exact thing. And part of the cool part of Zapier is Google Drive, Dropbox, it doesn't matter. your first connector would just be in Dropbox and then everything else would be the same as what Teddy's showing.

[00:22:10] Speaker 6: Yeah, let me just close this and see if that helps. Okay, there we go. So now in Zapier, this part is a little bit tricksy. So for me, because I wanted to use an existing project here, I need the project ID. The way you get that is by going into your project in Descript and this big string of letters and numbers that happens right after the dscript.com but before the question mark is your project ID. So you would copy and paste that into here. And then for media URL, you would select the file. You'll have a bunch of options here. So you can see like step output title. You'll want to make sure it's the one that says file because that's what makes sure that the actual file you picked in Google Drive, or if you used a Dropbox step like Aaron was talking about, actually gets passed to Descript. And then from there, you have some other fields that are optional, like if you want to name it something specific, or if you want to name your composition something specific. And then from there, we also have our second Descript step, which is to edit the project with API, with AI. And so this one is a lot simpler than the import media step, where similarly, you need to put the project ID that you want edited, and then you just put a prompt. And this would be a prompt that goes directly to Underlord. So here, for example, we have use all my videos in my project media, meaning all the videos that I just imported using Zapier, to create a video of my aquarium footage, and then I'm giving some commands to Underlord, like I want studio sound applied, I want background music, and I want it to be in landscape orientation, and then when I run my ZAP, what I should see is this. So here is the media file I uploaded from Google Drive, a video of jellyfish I saw at an aquarium, and then here's the actual video that Underlord made And that's a little Zapier demo.

[00:24:27] Speaker 5: Yep, so for one 16 second video clip, it's a little bit of setup, but imagine you're the person with 180 of those in a Dropbox file. You can see how that'd be a smooth way to get those into a Descript project.

[00:24:43] Speaker 6: Yeah, or like another cool use case I've seen multiple people do actually, is you can set up a zap where your trigger step here is an email sent to a specific email address or with a specific title. And let's say you're on your phone recording video out and about, you could then from your phone send an email that then triggers this zap to import that footage into Descript so that by the time you get home and you're ready to edit, your footage is already waiting for you.

[00:25:14] Speaker 5: And you just answered this question organically, Teddy, you're a pro at this. That's-

[00:25:21] Speaker 6: A little ahead of the curve.

[00:25:23] Speaker 5: Yeah, there's lots of ways to do it, but with, let's say you have a bunch of them or you do that regularly, that's way easier than airdropping it to yourself and then get on a MacBook and upload. Or there is a mobile upload option where if you start a project in Descript, you get a QR code. But the way that Teddy just showed is use Zapier to get those two things to talk to each other.

[00:25:44] Speaker 6: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:47] Speaker 5: I love when we answer questions and don't know it. Let's do this one, cause I know you know the answer and have been asked this a hundred times. Michael on LinkedIn wants to know, but I wanna export or download the video all from Claude or something with MCP.

[00:26:07] Speaker 6: Oh yes, this is a very hot topic. I can't give you an exact date for when this is gonna happen, but it is something we are actively working on and really want, are very eager to deliver to people because we know everybody's hungry for it and honestly, I'm hungry for it as somebody who uses the API myself.

[00:26:28] Speaker 5: Yeah, which is why Teddy said earlier, it's not totally replacing having to open Descript, whether it's polish it up, tweak some things, move the media around, but there will be a day soon when you can have that web link or the local export. How about, what's your take as we have about six minutes left here, if somebody says, I'm not really a CLI person, which of these entry points would you recommend to somebody? MCP versus Zapier versus open up your terminal?

[00:27:04] Speaker 6: That's a great question. So I think if you're somebody who is not familiar with the terminal, you know, your best bet would be the MCP. It's the lowest barrier to entry, and it's in some ways the easiest. And you know, because of the LLM of it all, sometimes you get little whoopsies that can be hard to understand. But for the most part, it's very smooth and very easy to use for everybody. But if you're somebody who's coming in with a concrete project plan, and you also are a little more savvy around, like, I want to use specifically these apps in this exact way, I think that's when Zapier or the CLI might be your best bet, because those will give you a little more fine-grained control over exactly what you want to do and exactly what you want to tell the API.

[00:28:02] Speaker 5: Yeah, and then we have a request from one of our viewers on YouTube. They want to see the hot dog sandwich video. Can you show us what Claude came up with?

[00:28:12] Speaker 6: Let's see what Claude came up with. Okay, over here. It looks like, so this time, it seems like Claude did not add any media to the video. So that we'll need to ask Claude to redo.

[00:28:25] Speaker 5: But. Yeah, I think in your chat, Claude gave you a script and some timestamps, if I remember correctly.

[00:28:36] Speaker 6: But let's see, it says, so Claude says a hot dog is a sandwich by dictionary definition, but culturally a hot dog is a hot dog and transcends classification.

[00:28:50] Speaker 5: That's such a Claude answer.

[00:28:52] Speaker 6: But actually, this brings up a good point, too, which is if you look at your project, because I know it comes up for people sometimes where they're like, well, what if I don't like what Claude made or Claude did a bad job? That's okay. You can just tell Claude, do it better, you know, like, please add more visuals to this project. use stock media and AI generated images if you need to. And you can just tell Cloud to do it again. And right now I would encourage folks to just experiment, play around with it. I know also our support team is very open to helping people with credits if you're concerned about blowing through AI credits, trying this out, because we just really wanna encourage people to use the MCP and let us know how it feels, what you think, how could we make it better, you know?

[00:29:52] Speaker 5: Yes. And also, if you have a use case that you think other people would be interested in, we will make some skills. We're in the process of making some skills. If you're a big LLM user, and put those in a public repo, a shared folder that everybody can use. So we have our ideas, but you're the end user and you know your podcast or YouTube channel or your videos that you're making, we can help turn those into skills and share them with everybody. So if you have one, tag us, send us a DM. In the chat, Gabe put a link to get in touch with support. If your AI credits become a barrier to experimenting with the MCP, let us know and we will take care of that. And then there's one more question I want to make sure that we get to. What if someone like Light Heat on YouTube says, hey, I typically do a certain process of editing steps in my Descript app. Now I know there's this API. could I use the API to make that a repeatable process? Do you have any thoughts you'd want to share for that user, Teddy?

[00:31:16] Speaker 6: Yeah, I think what you could do is you could actually use, for example, cloud co-work to create, say, like a scheduled task or Zapier to do the same, where with the edit API specifically, if you have a concrete list of how you want the interview edited and the edit steps you you want made, you could easily just automate that, have that turn into a task for Claude or Zapier to execute using the API every time you have a new interview.

[00:31:51] Speaker 5: Yeah, and I think, say, by the end of this video, Teddy has this long conversation. One of the cool things LLMs can do is say, what if I make videos about this or like this? Could you turn this into a prompt that I could reuse in the future? That is super helpful.

[00:32:10] Speaker 6: Because one of the things I know that's a pain point for people right now is, let's say you get a really good flow with Underlord, when you start a new chat or go into a new project, that chat history gets blown away. So that's one of the nice things about, for example, Claude, is I still have all my chats here, and I can still go back to something that worked really well for me and say, hey Claude, can you make this repeatable for me?

[00:32:36] Speaker 5: Yep, and then as we wrap up, let's do one more question here from our YouTube user. I'm going to, there we go. That's a better layout. So let's clarify credits and what we mean. What's the difference between like my Claude usage and rate limits versus actually editing and taking action in Descript with Underlord?

[00:33:05] Speaker 6: This is a really great question. So basically, if I'm using Claude to talk to Descript, there are two different credits being charged. So there's the tokens that come with my Claude plan. So for example, right now, my personal Claude is a free plan. So if I just keep messaging with Claude, at some point, I'm going to run out of Claude tokens. But that doesn't necessarily mean I've run out of Descript credits. When Claude actually talks to Descript and then either media is imported into Descript, that will charge you media minutes. Or if when Claude finally sends Underlord a request and Underlord does something, that's when you'll be charged Underlord credits. But for example, when Claude is just on its own planning things and thinking, how is the best way to prompt Descript? I'm going to go look at these API docs. That's happening in the Cloud Tokens world versus when it actually then makes the call to Descript. That's when Descript credits start being charged. And you can, as usual, you can go to your settings, and you should be able to see in your Usage tab the credits being charged, like always. And they'll be flagged as Underlord credits if it's just Underlord making edits. But, for example, if it's Underlord doing something specific, like generating images or Studio Sound, we'll still show you that and we'll still show you in your roll-up of how many AI credits you've been using month to month.

[00:34:36] Speaker 5: Yeah, so anything in your project that you did natively in Descript that costs Underlord credits is the same when you're using the API. Yeah, awesome. Well, we are going to outro now because we are at time And hopefully everybody is leaving with ideas, links of what you needed to get unblocked. And the main place the conversation is happening in our Discord, which you may or may not be in, we have an API early access channel. We would love to see videos you made, hear struggles you have, things you wish you could do in addition to exporting, which is next on the list of things that's coming your way. That's the place. You can also connect with support if the AI credits are an issue. The link is in the chat on YouTube or you can scan this QR code. Teddy, what's the next thing you're gonna try in the API? Do you have any other fun ideas besides the Trivia Night app that you mentioned?

[00:35:46] Speaker 6: So actually, my golden goose that I'm always chasing that I'm always chasing as far as Descript videos is whenever there's a new exciting science article published like, we discovered this new star or the manatees are resurging. I would love if that is piped into Descript and makes me like a little two-minute positivity David Attenborough style documentary so that I can have my own personal nature documentary

[00:36:17] Speaker 5: feed to look through. Yeah, that's actually an awesome idea. And then in the afternoon when you're mad at the world or overwhelmed, you schedule like a two-minute nature refresh break and you have a video waiting for you. Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, great. Well, we will for planet Earth too. Yeah, you have to go to your way to find some of those these days, as it seems like. Great, well, we look forward to hearing everybody's thoughts and seeing your projects, especially in the Discord channel. Teddy, thank you very much for you and your team's work on making this a feature and getting it out to everybody so that they can experiment and find awesome new ways to make videos that you couldn't do a month ago.

[00:37:04] Speaker 6: Thank you for having me here. I hope everyone has a great time using the API.

[00:37:08] Speaker 5: Yes, you are very welcome, Sbani. We'll leave that QR code up. Thanks everybody. Next Friday, we will be back on all of the same channels and we're gonna make that a recurring thing. So if you have a new question or a new problem, you can let us know on socials or you can come back on Friday and Teddy and I will be back. Thanks everybody.

[00:37:30] Speaker 6: Bye-bye.

[00:37:33] Speaker 1: ♪♪♪