youtube-mcp

Claude gets your channels' real analytics (retention, traffic sources, the searches that found you, audience) and all of public YouTube (search, any video or channel, comments). It can research the way you would with YouTube Studio and a search tab open, on claude.ai, the desktop and phone apps, and Claude Code.

It runs on your own Vercel account with your own Google Cloud project. Only the Google accounts you list can use it.

Ask it things like

How did my last three videos do in their first week, and where did the views come from?

Find what broke out this week in budget AI hardware, and what the top comments keep asking for.

My retention drops at 0:40 on the last video. Compare it with my best one and tell me what's different.

Related MCP server: YouTube MCP Server

Why this one

Tools

How it works

flowchart LR
  C[Claude] -- "OAuth 2.1 + PKCE" --> S["youtube-mcp<br/>(your Vercel)"]
  S -- "Sign in with Google<br/>owners only" --> G[Google]
  S -- "API key" --> D[YouTube Data API]
  S -- "each channel's<br/>read-only login" --> A[YouTube Analytics API]

The app is both a small OAuth server and an MCP server. Claude signs in through it; you approve with your Google account. Your channels are added once from a setup page.

Setup

About 15 minutes. You need a Google account, a Vercel account and Claude.

1. Google Cloud

1. In console.cloud.google.com, create a project.

2. APIs & Services → Library: enable YouTube Data API v3 and YouTube Analytics API.

3. APIs & Services → Credentials → Create credentials → API key, restricted to the YouTube Data API v3. This is YOUTUBE_API_KEY.

4. Google Auth Platform → Branding: an app name, your email, a homepage URL and a privacy policy URL. Google asks for both URLs before it lets you publish.

5. Audience: External, then Publish app. While an app is in "Testing", Google expires its logins after 7 days.

6. Clients → Create client → Web application, with the redirect URI https://<your-domain>/auth/google/callback (you get the domain in the next step and can edit this later). Add http://localhost:3000/auth/google/callback too if you'll run it locally. The client ID and secret are GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID and GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET.

2. Deploy

Click Deploy with Vercel above and fill in:

Then add your Vercel domain to the Google client's redirect URIs (step 1.6).

3. Add your channels

1. Open https://<your-domain>/setup and sign in with an owner account.

2. Click Add a channel and pick the Google account (or Brand Account) that owns the channel. Google warns that the app isn't verified: it's your own app, so choose Advanced → Go to (your app).

3. Copy the value it shows into a Vercel environment variable named YOUTUBE_CHANNELS, then redeploy.

Repeat for each channel. The value is encrypted with your CONNECTOR_KEY.

4. Connect Claude

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector, with the URL https://<your-domain>/mcp. On a Team or Enterprise plan, an owner adds it under Organization settings → Connectors first. Click Connect, sign in with your owner Google account and click Allow.

Security

• Google scopes are read-only: youtube.readonly, yt-analytics.readonly, yt-analytics-monetary.readonly.

• Only accounts in OWNER_EMAILS can sign in, add channels or allow a client.

• Clients use OAuth 2.1 with PKCE. Access tokens last 1 hour and refresh tokens 90 days, all sealed with AES-256-GCM using CONNECTOR_KEY.

• To sign every client out, change CONNECTOR_KEY and redeploy, then add your channels again. To cut off one channel, remove it in /setup and remove the app at myaccount.google.com/permissions.

Limits

• Impressions and click-through rate aren't in YouTube's API, only in Studio.

• Other channels' transcripts aren't in the official API.

• 10,000 quota units a day per Google project. A search costs 100; most other reads cost 1.

Run locally

cp .env.example .env.local   # fill it in
pnpm install
pnpm dev                     # http://localhost:3000

Make your own connector

Nothing in the OAuth server (src/lib/oauth, src/app/oauth, src/app/api/oauth, src/app/.well-known) or the MCP route (src/app/mcp) knows about YouTube. Replace src/lib/tools.ts with your own tools and you have a private connector for anything.

License

MIT. Not affiliated with YouTube, Google or Anthropic.