immich-photo-manager

MCP server for intelligent photo management with Immich — your self-hosted library, understood.

If your Immich library has grown past what you can manage by hand, immich-photo-manager gives any AI assistant direct access to your instance — search, organize, deduplicate, and curate albums through natural conversation. Works with Claude, Gemma, or any MCP-compatible client. Runs locally — your photos never leave your server.

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What It Does

Say "create albums for all my trips" and watch it work:

GPS coordinates, CLIP visual search, and temporal matching — combined in one request to create dozens of curated albums. No scripts, no manual sorting.

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Quick Start

Prerequisites

• A running Immich instance (self-hosted, v1.90+)
• An Immich API key (how to create one)
• Python 3.10+ with pip (download)

Install as Claude Plugin (recommended)

git clone https://github.com/drolosoft/immich-photo-manager.git
cd immich-photo-manager

claude plugin marketplace add ./
claude plugin install immich-photo-manager
./scripts/setup-mcp.sh

That's it. Ask Claude: "how healthy is my photo library?"

For manual MCP server setup, see Getting Started.

Works in Claude Code

The same plugin runs in Claude Code — search your library, curate albums, and generate galleries right from the terminal.

Full conversation transcript: Claude Code demo

Works with Any MCP Client

immich-photo-manager is an MCP server — it works with any AI assistant that speaks the Model Context Protocol, not just Claude.

Use the package entry point directly with uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "immich": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["immich-photo-manager"],
      "env": {
        "IMMICH_BASE_URL": "https://your-immich-server.com",
        "IMMICH_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

immich-photo-manager defaults to MCP stdio transport. Set MCP_TRANSPORT=http when you want to run the server as a Streamable HTTP service.

============================================================
IMMICH-PHOTO-MANAGER × GEMMA 4 (LM STUDIO)
============================================================

Immich: https://your-immich-server.com
Model:  gemma4-26b-it (local, LM Studio)
Query:  "Show me my Lanzarote albums"

1. Getting MCP tool schemas...
   50 MCP tools available

2. Asking Gemma 4...
   Gemma 4 chose: list_albums({})

3. Executing 'list_albums' against Immich...
   Found 124 total albums, 14 Lanzarote albums:
     - Lanzarote Amarillo (26 photos)
     - Lanzarote Rojo (201 photos)
     - Lanzarote Azul (187 photos)
     - Lanzarote Marrón (208 photos)
     - Lanzarote Negro (193 photos)
     - Lanzarote Verde (201 photos)
     - Lanzarote Gasolina (174 photos)
     ...

4. Gemma 4 interpreting results...
   "I found 14 Lanzarote albums — 7 color-themed with
    1,190 photos and 7 location-specific albums."

RESULT: Zero cloud dependency — fully self-hosted stack.

Client	Status
Claude Code	Tested
Claude Desktop	Tested
LM Studio (Gemma 4)	Tested
Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Cline, Zed	Compatible (MCP stdio)

Full transcript: Gemma 4 demo · Test script: test-lmstudio-mcp.py

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Highlights

• AI-powered search — natural language photo search via CLIP ("sunset at the beach", "birthday cake")
• Geographic albums — create albums organized by place, combining GPS + CLIP + temporal matching
• Metadata repair — fix noon/midnight timestamps, infer missing GPS from neighboring photos, correct timezone offsets
• Library cleanup — detect screenshots, duplicates, and low-quality images with multi-signal analysis
• Duplicate detection — cross-source analysis using perceptual hashing (finds re-encoded copies across Apple Photos, Google Photos, and other imports)
• Bulk rotation — rotate entire albums or selections at once (90°/180°/270°); non-destructive, accumulates across calls, one-click revert
• People & face management — list, search, merge, and organize recognized people; reassign misidentified faces; view face thumbnails
• Trash & asset lifecycle — safely delete assets to trash, permanently remove, restore from trash; complete asset lifecycle management
• Library health — one command for asset inventory, metadata quality, storage breakdown, and recommendations
• Tags & organization — create, apply, and manage tags across your library; bulk tag and untag assets
• Interactive galleries — self-contained HTML pages with embedded thumbnails, 3 themes, 4 view modes, and a Cowork Actions Panel for batch operations

Select photos in the gallery, click an action, and paste the command into Claude. See Skills Reference for all 12 skills.

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Why immich-photo-manager?

Immich is excellent at storing and viewing your photos. But managing a large library — deduplication, metadata repair, album curation, storage analysis — still requires manual effort or custom scripts.

	Manual / scripts	immich-photo-manager
🔍	Write API calls, parse JSON	Natural language — "find my sunset photos from Italy"
🗺️	Export GPS, cluster manually	Geographic albums — automatic GPS + CLIP + temporal matching
🧹	Hash files, diff checksums	Perceptual hashing — finds re-encoded duplicates across import sources
🔧	Edit EXIF one file at a time	Metadata repair — batch-fix timestamps, infer GPS, correct timezones
📊	Query database, build reports	Library health — one command for metadata quality, storage, recommendations
🔄	Rotate one photo at a time	Bulk rotation — rotate entire albums at once, non-destructive
🏷️	No tag management in UI	Tags — create, bulk apply/remove across assets
🛡️	Manual review of every action	Safety first — shows findings, asks before acting

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Documentation

Document	Description
Getting Started	Installation, manual MCP setup, deployment options, and troubleshooting
Skills Reference	All 12 skills — workflows, triggers, parameters, output formats
MCP Tools Reference	All 50 MCP tools — parameters, return types, examples
Architecture	How base64-embedded thumbnails solve the Cowork sandbox restriction
CORS Setup Guide	Optional — enable direct URL thumbnail loading for browser-viewed galleries

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🦙 Glama Score

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome — bug fixes, new skills, feature ideas. Open an issue or submit a PR.

If immich-photo-manager helps manage your library, consider giving it a star on GitHub — it helps others discover the project.

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Support

If immich-photo-manager saved you time or made your photo library easier to manage, consider buying me a coffee — it keeps the next one coming!

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License

MIT License — free to use, modify, and distribute.

Forged by Drolosoft · Tools we wish existed