youtube-context-mcp 0.4.1

A small MCP server giving agents YouTube video context: transcripts, timestamped segments, deep links, and metadata

youtube-context-mcp

A small MCP server that gives agents rich context about a YouTube video — its transcript and timestamped segments, jump-to-the-moment deep links, and metadata (title, channel, upload date, duration, view/like counts, chapters, tags) — so they can answer questions, summarize, pull quotes, or point you to exactly where something is said.

It builds on youtube-transcript-api (transcripts) and yt-dlp (metadata), which do the actual fetching, and shapes them into a focused set of MCP tools designed for agents.

Transcripts are a video's existing captions/subtitles — it does not transcribe audio (no Whisper/ASR). Videos without captions have no transcript to return.

Install

Run it on demand with uv (no install needed):

uvx youtube-context-mcp@latest

Or install it:

pip install youtube-context-mcp

Use it with an agent

Add it to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-context": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["youtube-context-mcp@latest"]
    }
  }
}

Or, in Claude Code:

claude mcp add youtube-context -- uvx youtube-context-mcp@latest

Running over HTTP

By default the server talks stdio (the client launches it). If your client runs on a different host — for example LM Studio on Windows while this server runs in WSL2 — run it as a long-lived HTTP server instead and point the client at a URL:

youtube-context-mcp --transport http --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8000

Then add it by URL:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-context": { "url": "http://localhost:8000/mcp" }
  }
}

(--host 0.0.0.0 makes it reachable from the Windows side; WSL2 forwards localhost.)

Tools

Tool	What it does
get_transcript(video, languages=["en"], include_timestamps=False, translate_to=None)	Returns the transcript as text. video is a URL or 11-char ID. Set include_timestamps for [mm:ss] / [h:mm:ss] lines; translate_to for an ISO language code.
get_transcript_segments(video, languages=["en"], translate_to=None)	Returns the transcript as structured {start, text} segments (exact float start in seconds) instead of flattened text. Use it when you need timestamps to work with — e.g. feed a segment's start into build_video_link. Heavier on tokens than get_transcript, so prefer the latter for plain reading.
build_video_link(video, start)	Builds a watch?v=…&t=<seconds> URL that opens the video at a moment, so a user can click straight to it. start is seconds or a "mm:ss" / "h:mm:ss" string. Pairs with get_transcript_segments to turn "where is X mentioned?" into a clickable link.
list_transcripts(video)	Lists available transcripts (language, code, manual vs auto-generated, translatable) plus the translation targets. Use it when get_transcript can't find your language.
get_video_metadata(video, include_description=False)	Returns the video's title, channel, upload date, duration, view/like counts, chapters and tags. video is a URL or 11-char ID. Set include_description=True to also include the (often long) description. Use it to answer "what's this video / who made it?" without fetching the transcript.

Proxies (optional)

YouTube blocks most datacenter/cloud IPs, so on a server you may hit RequestBlocked / IpBlocked (transcripts) or a "Sign in to confirm you're not a bot" block (metadata). Locally this is rarely needed. The same env vars route both transcript and metadata requests through a proxy:

Env var	Purpose
WEBSHARE_PROXY_USERNAME, WEBSHARE_PROXY_PASSWORD	Use Webshare rotating residential proxies.
WEBSHARE_PROXY_LOCATIONS	Optional CSV of country codes, e.g. us,de.
YT_TRANSCRIPT_HTTP_PROXY, YT_TRANSCRIPT_HTTPS_PROXY	Use a generic HTTP/HTTPS proxy instead.
YT_TRANSCRIPT_TIMEOUT	Per-request timeout in seconds (default 20).

With no env set, requests go out directly.

Troubleshooting

• RequestBlocked / IpBlocked — YouTube blocked the IP. Set the proxy env vars above.
• No transcript found — call list_transcripts to see which languages exist for that video.
• Transcripts disabled — the uploader turned captions off; nothing can be fetched.

Development

uv sync
uv run ruff check . && uv run ruff format --check .
uv run pytest
uv run mcp dev src/youtube_context_mcp/server.py --with-editable .   # interactive inspector

License

MIT

Credits

Transcript fetching is done by youtube-transcript-api by Jonas Depoix, and metadata by yt-dlp. This project is the MCP adapter that wires them together for agents.