YouTube Research Skills for AI Agents

Practical AI agent skills for YouTube research, powered by the TubeLab MCP.

These skills help agents find niches that are working, bend a proven format into a new market, explain why a video broke out, write trend reports, generate ideas and titles for a channel, analyze a channel, reverse engineer what works for a channel, research thumbnails, map competitors, mine comments and transcripts, audit monetization, find sponsors, build sponsor prospect lists for brands, and watch a niche over time.

Together they work like a full YouTube agency with six roles: a niche scout, a validator, a trend analyst, a script analyst, a packaging team and a monetization team. It runs on your machine or in your chat app, through your own agent and your own TubeLab account.

This is not endpoint routing. Each skill is a short research workflow: the judgment an expert strategist brings, the traps to avoid, and the report to produce. Every number comes from a tool response, every finding carries a linked channel and title, a view count, an outlier ratio and a date.

Install

npx skills add TubeLabHQ/youtube-research-skills

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf, VS Code, Grok Build, and other agents that support the Agent Skills spec.

Grok Build reads skills from .grok/skills/ in a repo or ~/.grok/skills/, so a copy of the skills/ folder is enough:

git clone https://github.com/TubeLabHQ/youtube-research-skills && cp -r youtube-research-skills/skills/* ~/.grok/skills/

Claude Code can also install it as a plugin, which registers the MCP at the same time:

claude plugin marketplace add TubeLabHQ/youtube-research-skills
claude plugin install youtube-research@tubelab

Setup

Connect the TubeLab MCP once in your client: https://public-api.tubelab.net/mcp

• Claude Code: the plugin does it, or claude mcp add --transport http tubelab https://public-api.tubelab.net/mcp. The first call opens OAuth.
• Claude.ai and Claude Desktop: the TubeLab connector, OAuth.
• ChatGPT and Codex: the TubeLab app, OAuth. Codex supports ChatGPT apps, so no API key is needed there.
• Grok Bot: ask a Bot to add the MCP server at the URL above (a Bot can add an MCP server that is not in its catalog by URL) and complete the authentication. Then hand the Bot this repo URL, or paste a SKILL.md, and ask it to save each one as a skill, starting with tubelab-mcp. Skills are shared by all your Bots; if a Bot cannot find one, open Connect apps and enable it under Private skills.
• Grok Build (terminal): skills from the folders above; add the MCP from the /mcps modal.
• Cursor and other IDE agents: a TubeLab API key as Authorization: Bearer <key> (Pro plan).
• Claude.ai and Claude Desktop also take skills directly: zip a skill folder (cd skills && zip -r niche-finder.zip niche-finder/), upload it under Customize > Skills, turn it on, and Claude loads it when a request matches. Upload tubelab-mcp too; the workflow skills name it.
• ChatGPT desktop app and Codex: skills live in the Skills sidebar and in .agents/skills/ of a repo; Codex also installs them with $skill-installer.
• Any chat client that cannot install skills: paste skills/tubelab-mcp/SKILL.md and then the skill you want into the chat. Every skill is one file, so this works as is.

Setup guides per client: tubelab.net/docs/api/mcp-server. The MCP is included from the Starter plan. Searches cost credits (channels 5, outliers 2, trending formats 1); channel, video, transcript and comment reads are free.

Available Skills

🔭 Niche scout

Skill	Use it when you want to...	Output
niche-finder	Find breakout channels and cash cows with two preset searches, and turn them into new niche ideas	Ten ranked niche ideas, each with proof and a way to earn beyond AdSense
niche-bending	Bend the proven format of one channel, or of channels that already earn, into a new market or language	Four to six ranked bends, each shown as the source niche and the bend with their thumbnails, with proof, who already does it, and first titles
niche-watchlist	Watch a niche and get the delta since the last run, on a schedule	Dated digest of new and moving channels, each with a short analysis: worth studying or not, working topics, title formulas, best recent video. Config and state files

⚖️ Validator

Skill	Use it when you want to...	Output
niche-validator	Decide go or no-go on one niche, or compare a shortlist of up to three, with the Niche Analyzer scores and the agent's own read next to them; a new idea is scored on the two niches it draws on	Market Size, Unsaturated and Profitable scores, formula and own read, verdict, channels breaking in, formats, gaps, bending ideas, entry plan; a comparison table first for a shortlist

📈 Trend analyst

Skill	Use it when you want to...	Output
trend-report	See what is working in a niche or for a channel, and why	Up to five winning videos with verbatim hooks and why they worked, patterns, ideas

🎬 Script analyst

Skill	Use it when you want to...	Output
script-breakdown	Break down a video's structure, hook and beats from its transcript. Given a niche or a channel, it picks the top videos itself	Hook verbatim, typed beats with linked timestamps, one-line layout, optional skeleton

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