videohub-port

YouTube videos, channels and playlists as MCP tools, talking to the YouTube Data API v3. videohub-port is a clean-room rebuild of the core surface of the community YouTube MCP servers, under a new name: fresh code, no copied branding.

Auth model: TOKEN/KEY-ENV ONLY. Public reads use the YouTube Data API v3 with YOUTUBE_API_KEY sent as the key query parameter. The community originals' OAuth flow (for uploads, subscriptions writes and my-channel management) is NOT reproduced — there are no write tools in this subset.

Tools (core subset, 12)

search_videos, get_video, list_video_comments, get_channel, search_channels, list_playlists, get_playlist, list_playlist_items, get_video_transcript, list_channel_videos, get_video_categories, get_trending_videos.

The transcript tool is simplified: it is not a Data API call. It fetches the public timedtext endpoint with fmt=json3 for the requested language track directly (no caption-track listing/selection, no key parameter) and joins the json3 events into plain text; when no track is available it returns an honest "no caption track available" error and never invents text.

Not in this subset: the OAuth flow and all writes (uploads, playlist create/edit, subscriptions, likes/ratings, comments posting), my-channel/subscriptions reads requiring OAuth, live streaming, video insert/update/delete, channel sections/branding, i18n depth beyond categories/trending region, the analytics API, and captions download in srt/vtt formats or caption-track listing.

Related MCP server: youtube-research-mcp

Setup

Create an API key in the Google Cloud console (YouTube Data API v3 enabled) and set it:

export YOUTUBE_API_KEY=AIza...

Optionally override the API base with YOUTUBE_API_BASE_URL (default https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3) and the transcript base with YOUTUBE_TIMEDTEXT_BASE_URL (default https://www.youtube.com/api/timedtext). Every Data API request carries Accept: application/json and the key as the key query parameter (no Authorization header). Without the key, every tool call fails with an error naming the missing variable.

CLI

npx @reneturcios/videohub-port search_videos '{"query":"lo fi"}'
npx @reneturcios/videohub-port mcp        # stdio MCP server

Each tool name is a subcommand taking one JSON object argument.

MCP client config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "videohub-port": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@reneturcios/videohub-port", "mcp"],
      "env": { "YOUTUBE_API_KEY": "AIza..." }
    }
  }
}

Docker

docker run -i -e YOUTUBE_API_KEY ghcr.io/cloudcorprecords/videohub-port

Development

npm install
npm run build
npm test

License

MIT