youtube-mcp

MCP server for YouTube. Exposes two tools to any MCP client (Claude Desktop, etc.):

• get_video — fetch video metadata (title, description, views, duration, etc.)

• get_transcript — fetch timestamped transcript/caption segments

Setup

1. Get a YouTube Data API v3 key

1. Go to console.cloud.google.com

2. Create a project → APIs & Services → Enable APIs → search "YouTube Data API v3" → Enable

3. APIs & Services → Credentials → Create Credentials → API Key

4. Copy the key

2. Install

git clone https://github.com/your-username/youtube-mcp.git
cd youtube-mcp
pip install -e ".[dev]"

3. Configure

cp .env.example .env
# edit .env and paste your API key

4. Run tests

pytest -v

5. Wire up Claude Desktop

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "youtube_mcp.server"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/youtube-mcp",
      "env": {
        "YOUTUBE_API_KEY": "your_key_here"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. You can then ask Claude things like:

"Get me the transcript for video dQw4w9WgXcQ" "What is the view count and duration of this YouTube video: ..."

Related MCP server: YouTube MCP

Tools

get_video(video_id: str) -> VideoMetadata

get_transcript(video_id: str, language: str | None = None) -> list[TranscriptSegment]

language: BCP-47 code (e.g. "en", "fr"). Defaults to first available language.

Project structure

src/youtube_mcp/
  server.py       # MCP entry point, tool registry
  api.py          # YouTube Data API v3 wrapper
  transcript.py   # youtube-transcript-api wrapper
  models.py       # Pydantic models
tests/
  test_api.py
  test_transcript.py