YouTube MCP Server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for extracting and processing YouTube video content. This server provides tools for LLMs to directly read video transcripts, analyze metadata, search within videos, fetch top comments, and get channel statistics.

Features

• Transcript Extraction: Fetch video subtitles/transcripts with timestamps (No API Key Required).

• Video Summarization: Intelligent transcript chunking for LLM summarization.

• Transcript Search: Search for specific words or phrases and get exact YouTube timestamp links.

• Video Metadata: Fetch views, likes, descriptions, duration, and tags (Requires API Key).

• Top Comments: Fetch the most relevant comments of a video.

• Channel Info: Get subscriber count, total video count, and channel creation date.

Related MCP server: YouTube Insights MCP Server

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18 or higher (v22+ recommended)

• A YouTube Data API v3 Key (Only required for metadata, comments, and channel info)

Installation

# 1. Clone or download the repository
# 2. Install dependencies
npm install

# 3. Build the project
npm run build

Configuration

For tools requiring an API key (video info, comments, channel info), you need to get a free API key from Google Cloud Console.

1. Copy the example env file:

   cp .env.example .env

2. Add your YouTube Data API v3 key to the .env file:

   YOUTUBE_API_KEY=YOUR_API_KEY_HERE

Development

# Run in development mode (auto-reload on save)
npm run dev

Adding to Cursor / Claude Desktop

Add the following to your mcp_config.json file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/youtube-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "YOUTUBE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY_HERE"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tools List