search_youtube_channels
Find YouTube channels matching a free-text query. Returns ranked candidates with channel IDs and confidence scores for channel identification.
Instructions
Search YouTube for channels matching a free-text query.
Use this when the user names a channel ("Forward Guidance", "All-In podcast") or describes one ("a good macro investing channel") and you need to identify candidate channels before adding to the registry.
No YouTube API key required — uses yt-dlp scraping under the hood.
Args: query: Free-text search term, e.g. "Forward Guidance" or "macro investing". max_results: How many distinct channels to return, ranked by relevance (default 5).
Returns: { "candidates": [ { "channel_id", "name", "channel_url", "hit_count", "confidence_score" }, ... ] } Empty list if nothing matches. Subscriber count + recent videos are NOT populated here — call get_channel_metadata(channel_id) for that.
Input Schema
| Name | Required | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| query | Yes | ||
| max_results | No |