YouTube skills for AI agents

Agent skills for YouTube transcripts, search, channels and playlists, powered by YTAPI. They work with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes Agent and any agent that reads Agent Skills.

Plain HTTPS calls with curl, nothing else to install. They also work where fetching YouTube directly fails: on servers and cloud agents, tools like yt-dlp often get HTTP 429, a bot check or an IP block.

Install

Claude plugin: the YTAPI MCP server plus skills for video summaries, channel digests, topic research and channel analysis. In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add ytapi/youtube-skills
/plugin install ytapi@ytapi

The first time Claude uses a YTAPI tool, run /mcp and sign in to your YTAPI account (or create one: 200 free credits, no card). No API key needed. The plugin lives in plugins/ytapi.

Cursor: add the YTAPI MCP server in Cursor Settings → MCP, or put this in ~/.cursor/mcp.json (or .cursor/mcp.json in a project):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ytapi": { "url": "https://api.ytapi.dev/mcp" }
  }
}

Cursor asks you to sign in to your YTAPI account the first time. This repo is also a Cursor plugin: .cursor-plugin/plugin.json and .mcp.json at the root, plus the skills below.

Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Cline and others (skills.sh):

npx skills add ytapi/youtube-skills

One skill only:

npx skills add ytapi/youtube-skills --skill ytapi-youtube-transcript

OpenClaw (ClawHub):

npx clawhub@latest install ytapi

Hermes Agent:

hermes skills install skills-sh/ytapi/youtube-skills/skills/ytapi

Not a developer? Paste this to your agent:

Install the YouTube skill from https://github.com/ytapi/youtube-skills and set up my YTAPI key.

Skills

Skill	What it does
ytapi	Everything below in one skill: transcripts, video details, comments, most replayed moments, search, channels, playlists, batches
ytapi-youtube-transcript	Transcripts and subtitles: text, Markdown, timestamped JSON, SRT, VTT, any language
ytapi-youtube-search	Search videos, channels, playlists and Shorts, then read the results
ytapi-youtube-channels	Channel profiles, latest uploads, all videos, playlists
ytapi-youtube-summarize	Summaries and notes of a video or a channel's new uploads, with timestamped links
ytapi-youtube-channel-analysis	Competitor research: breakouts, how a channel grew, why a video went viral, and a playbook skill to reuse

Install ytapi if you are unsure.

API key

The skills read the key from YTAPI_API_KEY. If it is not set, the agent offers to create a free account for you: you give it your email address and the 6-digit code we send you, and it stores the key. No browser and no card. Or create a key yourself at ytapi.dev.

New accounts get 200 free credits. One successful request uses one credit (video basic info and search suggestions are free); failed requests are free. Until you buy a credit pack, a key can make 1 request per second and 100 per day. Packs start at $9 for 2,000 credits and never expire: pricing.

Examples

• "Summarize this video: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ"
• "Get the Spanish subtitles of this talk as an SRT file."
• "Find this week's most-viewed videos about Rust async and tell me what they cover."
• "What has @mkbhd uploaded lately? Give me a two-line summary of each."
• "List every video in this playlist with its length."
• "Why did @channel's latest video do so well? Turn what works into a playbook for my channel."

Links

• Docs: https://docs.ytapi.dev (for agents: https://docs.ytapi.dev/llms-full.txt)
• Remote MCP server: https://docs.ytapi.dev/agent-setup/#mcp
• Agent sign-up API: https://docs.ytapi.dev/agent-signup/
• Support: [email protected]

Contributing

Each skill carries a copy of shared/auth-setup.md in its references/ folder, because skills are installed one at a time. Edit the file in shared/, then run ./scripts/sync-references.sh.

The Claude plugin in plugins/ytapi has its own skills, which use the MCP tools and never handle an API key. When you change them, bump version in plugins/ytapi/.claude-plugin/plugin.json: Claude Code keeps plugin users on the version listed there.

Licensed MIT-0.