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yt-skill-mcp-server

yt-skill-mcp-server

by zaynelovecraft
OverviewSchemaSourceRelated ServersDiscussionsAdmin
TypeScript
Remote

yt-skill-mcp 🎬 -> 🧠

License: MIT Case Study Article

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server and CLI that fetches timestamped YouTube transcripts (no API key needed) and turns technical talks into reusable Cursor / Claude Code SKILL.md files.

📖 Engineering write-up: Building Custom MCP Servers in TypeScript for Cursor

Requirements

  • Node.js 18 or newer

  • The video must have captions (auto-generated captions are fine)

Related MCP server: YouTube Transcripts MCP Server

Quick start (CLI)

Print a timestamped transcript for any video. The first run downloads and compiles the package, which takes about 10 seconds.

npx -y github:zaynelovecraft/yt-skill-mcp "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMP-BPWsNqA"
# I cracked the tech job market (mMP-BPWsNqA)

[0s] So, yeah, basically what's creamy? I
[1s] wanted to talk about how I cheesed my
...

Pass a language code as a second argument to pick a caption track: ... <url> es.

Use it as an MCP server in Cursor

Add this to .cursor/mcp.json (project) or ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "yt-skill": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "-p", "github:zaynelovecraft/yt-skill-mcp", "yt-skill-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

Restart Cursor, then ask the agent something like:

Pull the transcript for https://youtu.be/mMP-BPWsNqA and turn the main workflow into a skill in .cursor/skills/.

Claude Desktop / Claude Code

The same command and args work in claude_desktop_config.json, or with Claude Code:

claude mcp add yt-skill -- npx -y -p github:zaynelovecraft/yt-skill-mcp yt-skill-mcp-server

Tools

Tool

Input

Output

fetch_youtube_transcript

url (watch URL, youtu.be link, or 11-char ID), optional lang

JSON with videoId, title, segmentCount, and the [123s] ... transcript

compile_cursor_skill

skillName, description, videoId, title, steps[]

A SKILL.md string with YAML frontmatter, ready to save to .cursor/skills/<skillName>/SKILL.md

Develop locally

git clone https://github.com/zaynelovecraft/yt-skill-mcp.git
cd yt-skill-mcp
npm install          # also compiles to dist/
node dist/cli.js "https://youtu.be/mMP-BPWsNqA"
node dist/mcp.js     # starts the MCP server on stdio

Troubleshooting

  • No captions available: the video has captions turned off. Try another video.

  • Transcript stops working: YouTube changes its internal API from time to time. Open an issue with the video URL.

License

MIT

This server cannot be deployed

Shareable, User-Owned Context BackendPeople, applications, and agents read, write, and coordinate together in one context lake. Reach it over MCP, a CLI, a Python SDK, or REST.fulcradynamics.comAd

Maintenance

ActivityMaintained
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Resources

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