Is Vidlens safe and trustworthy?

tashan scores Vidlens on public evidence — tashan score 50.0/100, it is currently active, note: a single primary maintainer (bus-factor risk), no known advisories against the current release, it runs a script at install time, its declared dependencies reach: shell. Audit scope: OSV advisories, install-time scripts, build provenance and declared permission surface. We do not review source code or execute the capability.

How do I install Vidlens?

In Claude Code: run `claude mcp add vidlens -- npx -y vidlens-mcp`. In Cursor / Claude Desktop, add it to mcp.json / claude_desktop_config.json.

Who maintains Vidlens?

source: thatsrajan/vidlens-mcp.

‹ The Index

Vidlens

npm

VidLens MCP — video as a queryable local asset for AI agents. 47 tools across YouTube, social video URLs, local media, semantic search, transcription, and visual search.

Works with: Claude Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, Cline, Windsurf, VS Code (installable)
installable: each client documents how to load an MCP server of this type — that is the client's promise, not a claim verified against this capability

Category: Design — see all ranked ›

Work: Retrieval systems

Who it is for: AI engineer

Install (Claude Code):

claude mcp add vidlens -- npx -y vidlens-mcp

solid

“8 worked examples; short of deep on per-tool docs and a stated limitation; read with 1 linked doc(s)”

This grade is wrong ›

tashan score: 50.0
Instruction depth: 65.0 (solid — documents the job properly, with examples you could follow)
Adoption: 147/wk
Upkeep: 66.0
Freshness: 79.0
Evidence coverage: 100% of the inputs this score can use
Health: active
License: MIT

Security audit

Every finding is shown in full — which advisory, the version that fixes it, and the exact command run at install time. Nothing in this audit is behind a licence.

No known advisoriesclearchecked against OSV for 1.5.1 — this package, not its dependency tree

Runs a script at install timecode

node -e "console.log('\nVidLens MCP installed. Run: npx vidlens-mcp setup. Start the server with: npx vidlens-mcp serve. Docs: https://github.com/thatsrajan/vidlens-mcp\n')"

Runs shell commandsfrom declared dependencies

No build provenanceno attestation — the published artifact cannot be traced to its source

What changed recently

2026-08-10 vidlens-mcp now reaches shell Its declared dependencies reach further into your machine than they did before.
2026-08-10 vidlens-mcp now runs a script when it installs Install-time code executes on your machine before you have used the tool once, and it did not do this before.
2026-08-27 vidlens-mcp published 1.5.1, was 1.4.1 A new release is available.

You are reading this because you came looking. tashan Pro gives tashan doctor the history behind it, so a run over your own config says which of YOURS moved.

You searched for one. Check the rest of your stack:

npx tashan-cli doctor

Reads the config already on your machine and names what is dead, deprecated or running code at install time. No account, nothing uploaded.

tashan Pro$6/mo

We recorded 3 changes to Vidlens in the last 45 days. Pro tells you on the day — for the servers in your own config, not the ones you thought to look up.

The whole series behind any row, back to the first day we measured it
The replacement, named — not just the news that something died
tashan doctor over your own config, on your own machine

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[![tashan](https://tashan.sh/badge/pkg-vidlens-mcp.svg)](https://tashan.sh/capability/pkg-vidlens-mcp.html)

npm ↗ · source ↗ · pkg:vidlens-mcp

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Measured 2026-09-13 · scorer s5 · how · something wrong here?