YouTube Transcript Agent Skill for Claude Code, Cursor & Codex 🎬

Get YouTube transcripts, search videos, browse channels, and pull playlists — from any AI agent, with no dashboard visit required to get started.

An Agent Skill that teaches Claude, Cursor, Antigravity, Windsurf, and any other Agent Skills-compatible tool how to fetch YouTube transcripts, search YouTube (videos or channels), resolve channel handles, browse a channel's full upload history, search inside a channel, and pull playlist contents — all through the getyoutubetranscript.com public API.

Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Antigravity, Windsurf, Cline, Codex, and 70+ other agent runtimes via skills.sh, and via ClawHub for OpenClaw/ClawdBot/Moltbot.

Metered API: 1 credit per successful request · 100 free credits on signup, no card · then from $5/month for 1,000 credits · Your agent can set it up for you

Install

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

ClawHub (OpenClaw/ClawdBot/Moltbot):

npx clawhub@latest install tubeagentkit/youtube-transcript

Manual (git clone):

git clone https://github.com/tubeagentkit/youtube-transcript-skills.git
cp -r youtube-transcript-skills/skills/youtube-transcript ~/.claude/skills/

Not a developer? Paste this into Claude, Cursor, or any AI agent that supports Agent Skills:

Install the youtube-transcript skill from this GitHub repo:
https://github.com/tubeagentkit/youtube-transcript-skills
I want to get YouTube transcripts, search YouTube, and browse channels from you directly.
Set everything up for me, including getting an API key.

The agent handles the rest — including signing you up for a free API key by email, no browser or dashboard visit needed.

What You Can Do

Just install and ask. No config, no code — talk to your agent in plain English.

Getting an API Key: No Browser Required

Ask your agent for a transcript with no key configured, and it will:

1. Tell you the cost (1 credit per successful request; 100 free credits for new accounts, then from $5/month for 1,000) and ask for the email you'd like to use.
2. Send that email to getyoutubetranscript.com, which creates the account (or signs you in) and emails you a 6-digit code.
3. Once you give it the code, it gets an API key, checks it, and saves it to ~/.config/getyoutubetranscript/api_key (readable only by you). The key is never printed in the chat.

Can't get the code (no access to that inbox, or it never arrives)? Sign up at getyoutubetranscript.com/dashboard and paste the key to your agent instead.

The key file is the only thing the skill writes. It only touches your shell profile if you ask it to and say yes to the exact line it will add (scripts/save_key.sh --profile). See skills/youtube-transcript/SKILL.md for the exact flow, including the two API calls involved (POST /api/v1/signup, POST /api/v1/signup/verify).

Available Endpoints

All of these are documented in SKILL.md and wrapped by a bundled script in scripts/. Base URL: https://getyoutubetranscript.com/api/v1.

Pricing

• 1 credit = 1 successful request. Failed calls are never charged.
• resolve and channel/latest are always free, regardless of plan.
• Top-ups: $2.50 per 1,000 credits (Monthly), $1.50 per 1,000 (Annual, 40% cheaper).
• View pricing / manage billing →

Troubleshooting

Two more things worth knowing:

• Signup email never arrives. Check spam first. Disposable/throwaway email domains are rejected outright with a clear error — use a real address.
• Timestamps are opt-in. GET /transcript returns the full spoken text as one string. Add timestamps=true to also get data.segments (start, duration, text per caption line, in seconds). Same credit cost, larger response, so your agent only asks for it when you want timestamps, quotes or chapters.

FAQ

Do I need a Google YouTube Data API key?
No. This replaces the need for a Google Cloud project, API key, and quota management entirely — signup here is free and instant.

Which endpoint should I use for a whole channel's videos?
channel/latest if you just want recent uploads (free). channel/videos if you want the complete upload history, paginated.

Can I search inside just one channel, not all of YouTube?
Yes — channel/search does exactly that, with the same pagination convention as everything else here.

Is there an MCP server version of this too?
Yes — see tubeagentkit/youtube-mcp for direct integration with Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and any other MCP-compatible client, including full OAuth 2.1 sign-in (no API key needed at all).

Also available as a REST API

Building an app instead of an agent skill? The exact same backend is a plain JSON REST API — see SKILL.md for the full endpoint reference, or the dashboard to get a key directly.

Disclosure

getyoutubetranscript.com is an independent product and is not affiliated with or endorsed by YouTube or Google.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome.

Related projects

Other ways to use the GetYouTubeTranscript API:

• youtube-transcript-api: YouTube Transcript API docs, endpoint reference, OpenAPI spec and examples in curl, Python, JavaScript, Go and PHP
• youtube-transcript-api-python: YouTube Transcript API SDK for Python
• youtube-transcript-api-node: YouTube Transcript API SDK for Node.js / TypeScript
• youtube-mcp: Remote YouTube MCP server for Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and VS Code
• youtube-transcript-cursor-plugin: YouTube Transcript Cursor plugin bundling the MCP server, skills, commands and a research agent
• n8n-nodes-getyoutubetranscript: YouTube transcript n8n community node, also usable as an AI Agent tool

License

MIT — see LICENSE.