YTAPI MCP server

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

Install ytapi if you are unsure.

API key

The skills read the key from YTAPIAPIKEY. 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

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.