yt-research

YouTube channel research, straight from your terminal.

Explore public channel metadata and upload histories, then export clean data for spreadsheets, scripts, and agents.

Quick start · Commands · Documentation · Contributing

[!IMPORTANT] yt-research is under active development. The 0.1.x interface may evolve before 1.0.

✨ Why yt-research?

The YouTube website is built for watching. yt-research is built for answering questions about a channel's public catalog.

discover  →  collect  →  filter  →  rank  →  export

It uses the official YouTube Data API v3 with your own API key and requests only public data. Ambiguous channel searches return candidates instead of silently choosing one.

⚡ Quick start

1 · Install

Use pipx with Python 3.11+ on macOS or Linux:

pipx install yt-research

2 · Authenticate

Add your YouTube Data API key to your operating system's native secret store:

yt-research auth set
yt-research auth status

3 · Research

Replace the placeholder with a public channel handle:

# See the newest uploads
yt-research videos latest @examplecreator --limit 10

# Find the most-viewed videos published in 2026
yt-research videos top @examplecreator --year 2026

# Search titles and save the results
yt-research videos list @examplecreator --match "tutorial" --format csv --output videos.csv

Terminal output defaults to a readable table. Redirected output automatically switches to JSON, while diagnostics stay on stderr:

yt-research videos list @examplecreator > videos.json

[!TIP] Need an API key? Follow the step-by-step API key setup guide. In CI or headless Linux, set YT_RESEARCH_API_KEY instead; it takes precedence over the native secret store.

uv tool install yt-research

uvx yt-research --help

git clone https://github.com/vedntp/yt-research.git
cd yt-research
uv sync
uv run yt-research --help

🧭 Commands at a glance

Video commands support --match, --year, --from, --to, --sort, --limit, --format, and --output. Run any command with --help or see the full command reference.

Research recipes

yt-research videos list @examplecreator --match "telescope" --sort published-asc

yt-research videos top @examplecreator --year 2026 --limit 25

yt-research videos list @examplecreator --from 2025-01-01 --format json --output videos.json

🔌 Built for people and programs

Interactive results are formatted as a styled terminal table:

_{Stylized preview based on fictional test fixture data · open full size}

The same commands fit cleanly into pipelines and spreadsheet workflows:

# Pipeline → versioned JSON
yt-research videos list @examplecreator --year 2026 | jq '.items[].title'

# Spreadsheet → fixed-column CSV
yt-research videos top @examplecreator --limit 50 --format csv --output top-videos.csv

JSON output includes a schema version, command metadata, the resolved channel, the effective query, result items, and request counts. See the JSON output contract for the stable shape.

📚 Documentation

Scope and privacy

yt-research does not use OAuth or access private account data. It does not download videos, retrieve transcripts or comments, classify Shorts, or run as a hosted service. API calls consume quota from the Google Cloud project associated with your key.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Read the contributing guide, Code of Conduct, and Security Policy before opening a contribution.

License

Released under the MIT License.

_{Built for curious people, repeatable research, and clean data.}