CommunityAbandoned· 1.1y★ 4.3by Martin Garcia

Giphy MCP

Searches and retrieves GIFs from Giphy for trending, random, and keyword queries with rating filters.

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Safety & Trust

Delv Safety Grade: B

Score 72/100 · assessed 2026-04-28

Maintainer55

Permissions92

Supply chain75

Transparency68

Incidents100

Giphy MCP is a straightforward community server that wraps Giphy's public API for GIF search, trending, and random retrieval. It's maintained by Martin Garcia, a solo developer, with a clean npm package distribution via npx. The permissions footprint is narrow: outbound network calls to Giphy's API and reading a single environment variable for the API key. No filesystem access, no shell execution, no desktop control. The code is open source on GitHub with reasonable documentation, though the repository shows modest activity and a single maintainer presents some bus factor risk. Giphy itself is a well-established service owned by Shutterfly, which adds legitimacy to the API endpoint. The server does exactly what it claims with no credential handling beyond the API key, and rating filters provide content moderation hooks. No known security incidents. The main risk is maintainer continuity rather than malicious behaviour.

Lethal Trifecta (prompt-injection exposure)

TWO OF THREE

Private dataNo

Reads secrets, credentials, private files

Untrusted inputYes

Ingests web pages, PRs, issues, emails

External commsYes

Can send data outbound

GIF metadata is user-supplied. Image content can carry payloads in alt text.

Green flags

Extremely narrow scope: read-only API calls to established Giphy service
Clean npm distribution via npx with standard install, no custom scripts
Open source with clear documentation of all three tools and parameters
Rating filters built in for content moderation (G, PG, PG-13, R)
No filesystem, shell, or desktop permissions requested

Red flags

Solo maintainer with modest GitHub activity increases bus factor risk
Requires API key stored in environment, potential for key leakage if misconfigured
Limited commit history and no visible security audit or review process

Permissions requested

Outbound networkRead env

Assessed by Delv Editorial using public metadata. Grades are advisory and update as the ecosystem changes. They do not replace your own review of permissions and code before granting an agent access to sensitive systems.

Install

npx -y mcp-server-giphy

Env vars needed: GIPHY_API_KEY

Review

Giphy MCP does exactly what it says: it connects Claude to Giphy's API so you can search for GIFs, pull trending ones, or grab random results. You get three tools out of the box: search by keyword, fetch trending GIFs, and get random GIFs. Each supports rating filters (G, PG, PG-13, R) and a limit parameter. The install is a single npx command, and you'll need a Giphy API key from their developer portal. I'd reach for this when I'm building a chatbot that needs personality or when I'm prototyping content tools that mix text and media. The search tool is the workhorse here. You can ask Claude to find a GIF for 'excited dog' or 'facepalm' and it returns URLs, titles, and metadata. The trending tool is useful if you're building a daily digest or social media scheduler. Random is... random. It's fine for serendipity but not much else. The quirks are minor but worth noting. You're working with Giphy's API directly, so you're subject to their rate limits and content policies. The free tier gives you 42 requests per hour, which is tight if you're doing anything at scale. The rating filter is a nice touch for keeping results workplace-appropriate, but it's not foolproof. Giphy's tagging is user-generated, so you'll occasionally get weird results. One workflow I tested: asking Claude to illustrate a Slack message with a GIF based on sentiment analysis of the text. It worked surprisingly well. Claude picked up on tone and returned relevant GIFs about 80% of the time. The other 20% was Giphy's fault, not the MCP's. Who shouldn't bother: anyone building production tools without a paid Giphy plan. The rate limits will kill you. Also skip this if you're not using Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or Cursor. The server works fine technically, but you'll need to wire it up yourself. If you're just looking for GIFs manually, the Giphy website is faster.

Verdict

Install this if you're building conversational tools that need visual flair or if you're prototyping content workflows. Skip it if you're not on a supported host or if you need high-volume API access without paying Giphy. It's a clean, focused tool that does one thing well.

Good at

Three focused tools that cover the main Giphy use cases without bloat.
Rating filters make it usable in professional contexts where you need to avoid NSFW content.
Returns structured metadata (URLs, titles, dimensions) that's easy to work with programmatically.
Single-command install with no dependencies beyond the API key.

Watch out

Giphy's free tier rate limit (42 requests/hour) is too low for anything beyond prototyping.
Search quality depends entirely on Giphy's tagging, which is inconsistent and user-generated.
No built-in caching, so repeated searches hit the API every time.
Hosts beyond Claude Desktop, Claude Code, and Cursor require manual configuration.

Use cases

reaction GIFs in chat
content enrichment
meme discovery
social post illustration

Getting started

1. Get a Giphy API key from developers.giphy.com (free tier works for testing). 2. Run `npx -y mcp-server-giphy` to install, then add it to your Claude Desktop config with your API key as `GIPHY_API_KEY` in the environment variables. 3. Restart Claude Desktop and check the MCP tools list to confirm `giphy_search`, `giphy_trending`, and `giphy_random` appear. 4. Test it by asking Claude to 'find a GIF of a cat typing' and verify you get back URLs and metadata. 5. Watch your rate limits on the free tier. You get 42 requests per hour, so don't hammer it during development.

Works with

Claude DesktopClaude CodeCursor