Skip to main content
Glama
flying3615

MCP YouTube Transcript Server

by flying3615
OverviewSchemaRelated ServersScoreDiscussions
TypeScript
Remote

MCP YouTube Transcript Server

A Model Context Protocol server that enables retrieval of transcripts from YouTube videos. This server provides direct access to video transcripts through a simple interface, making it ideal for content analysis and processing.

Table of Contents

Features

✨ Key capabilities:

  • Extract transcripts from YouTube videos

  • Support for multiple languages

  • Format text with continuous or paragraph mode

  • Retrieve video titles and metadata

  • Automatic paragraph segmentation

  • Text normalization and HTML entity decoding

  • Robust error handling

  • Timestamp and overlap detection

Getting Started

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 18 or higher

Installation

We provide two installation methods:

Option 1: Manual Configuration (Recommended for Production)

  1. Create or edit the Claude Desktop configuration file:

    • macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

    • Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

  2. Add the following configuration:

{ "mcpServers": { "youtube-transcript": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "-y", "@gabriel3615/mcp-youtube-transcript" ] } } }

Quick setup script for macOS:

# Create directory if it doesn't exist mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude # Create or update config file cat > ~/Library/Application\ Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json << 'EOL' { "mcpServers": { "youtube-transcript": { "command": "npx", "args": [ "-y", "@gabriel3615/mcp-youtube-transcript" ] } } } EOL

Usage

Basic Configuration

To use with Claude Desktop / Cursor / cline, ensure your configuration matches:

{ "mcpServers": { "youtube-transcript": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@gabriel3615/mcp-youtube-transcript"] } } }

Testing

With Claude App

  1. Restart the Claude app after installation

  2. Test with a simple command:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJpK3YTTKZ4 Summarize this video

Example output: Demo

With MCP Inspector

# Clone and setup git clone https://github.com/flying3615/mcp-youtube-transcript.git cd mcp-youtube-transcript npm install npm run build # Launch inspector npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node "dist/index.js" # Access http://localhost:6274 and try these commands: # 1. Paste the session id to pass authentication # 2. List Tools: clink `List Tools` # 3. Test get_transcripts with: # url: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCEmiRjPEtQ" # lang: "en" (optional) # enableParagraphs: false (optional)

Troubleshooting and Maintenance

Checking Claude Logs

To monitor Claude's logs, you can use the following command:

tail -n 20 -f ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp*.log

This will display the last 20 lines of the log file and continue to show new entries as they are added.

Note: Claude app automatically prefixes MCP server log files with mcp-server-. For example, our server's logs will be written to mcp-server-youtube-transcript.log.

Cleaning the npx Cache

If you encounter issues related to the npx cache, you can manually clean it using:

rm -rf ~/.npm/_npx

This will remove the cached packages and allow you to start fresh.

API Reference

get_transcripts

Fetches transcripts from YouTube videos.

Parameters:

  • url (string, required): YouTube video URL or ID

  • lang (string, optional): Language code (default: "en")

  • enableParagraphs (boolean, optional): Enable paragraph mode (default: false)

Response Format:

{ "content": [{ "type": "text", "text": "Video title and transcript content", "metadata": { "videoId": "video_id", "title": "video_title", "language": "transcript_language", "timestamp": "processing_time", "charCount": "character_count", "transcriptCount": "number_of_transcripts", "totalDuration": "total_duration", "paragraphsEnabled": "paragraph_mode_status" } }] }

download_video

Downloads a video from YouTube.

Parameters:

  • url (string, required): YouTube video URL or ID

  • output (string, optional): The path to save the video file (default: "video.mp4")

Response Format:

{ "content": [{ "type": "text", "text": "Video successfully downloaded to video.mp4", "metadata": { "videoId": "video_id", "path": "video.mp4", "timestamp": "processing_time" } }] }

Development

Project Structure

├── src/ │ ├── index.ts # Server entry point │ ├── index.ts # YouTube transcript fetching logic ├── dist/ # Compiled output └── package.json

Key Components

  • YouTubeTranscriptFetcher: Core transcript fetching functionality

  • YouTubeUtils: Text processing and utilities

Features and Capabilities

  • Error Handling:

    • Invalid URLs/IDs

    • Unavailable transcripts

    • Language availability

    • Network errors

    • Rate limiting

  • Text Processing:

    • HTML entity decoding

    • Punctuation normalization

    • Space normalization

    • Smart paragraph detection

Contributing

We welcome contributions! Please feel free to submit issues and pull requests.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Related Projects

This server cannot be installed

-
security - not tested
A
license - permissive license
-
quality - not tested

How are these scores calculated?

Resources

New MCP Servers

Latest Blog Posts

MCP directory API

We provide all the information about MCP servers via our MCP API.

curl -X GET 'https://glama.ai/api/mcp/v1/servers/flying3615/mcp-youtube-transcript'

If you have feedback or need assistance with the MCP directory API, please join our Discord server