yt-knowledge-mcp

Turn YouTube channels into a searchable knowledge base for AI assistants.

ytk downloads the transcripts of a channel (YouTube subtitles first, Whisper as fallback), indexes them for semantic search and exposes them through an MCP server, so Claude Desktop (or any MCP client) can search them and quote the exact fragment with a timestamped link.

Features

• Any channel: register channels by URL and keep them in sync.

• Subtitles first, Whisper as fallback: cheap when captions exist, complete when they do not.

• Semantic search with ChromaDB and bge-m3 (multilingual), filterable by channel and date.

• Cited answers: every fragment carries video_id, time range and a youtube.com/watch?v=...&t=...s link.

• MCP server with three tools: list_channels, search_transcripts, get_transcript_excerpt.

• Optional ytk ask to answer a question with Claude, citing fragments.

• Light core: the domain, use cases and CLI have no third-party dependencies. Heavy libraries live behind optional extras and are imported lazily.

Related MCP server: MCP Codebase RAG Server

Install

python -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e ".[youtube,search,mcp]"      # subtitles + search + MCP server
# optional extras: whisper, cuda, llm, all, dev

Quick start

ytk add https://www.youtube.com/@some-channel
ytk update                      # sync transcripts + build the index
ytk search "risk management"    # semantic search from the terminal

ytk update --latest 20 processes only the most recent videos. Run ytk --help for every command: add, remove, channels, sync, index, update, search, ask, excerpt, serve.

Use it from Claude Desktop

Add the server to claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yt-knowledge": {
      "command": "/path/to/yt-knowledge-mcp/.venv/bin/python",
      "args": ["-m", "yt_knowledge", "serve"],
      "env": { "YTK_WORKSPACE": "/path/to/yt-knowledge-mcp/workspace" }
    }
  }
}

Configuration

All settings are optional environment variables. The data directory can also be set with --workspace.

Your data stays yours

workspace/ (transcripts, vector index, channel list) is git-ignored. See docs/sharing.md for how to share a knowledge base. Respect YouTube's terms of service and the copyright of the channels you archive.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev,mcp]"
pytest -q && ruff check . && mypy

The architecture is described in docs/architecture.md.

License

MIT, see LICENSE.