video-research

Video Research

Understand YouTube video content without watching — get transcripts, metadata, comments, and channel info.

Quick start

# Drop any YouTube URL to get metadata + transcript in one call
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs url "<youtube-url>"

Use cases

Get a video transcript or summary

Extract the full transcript so you can summarize, search, or quote from a video.

# Metadata + transcript together (fastest for a single video)
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs url "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Transcript only
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs transcript VIDEO_ID

# With timestamps (useful for "what did they say at minute X?")
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs transcript VIDEO_ID --timestamps

# Non-English transcript
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs transcript VIDEO_ID --lang es

See references/commands.md for all transcript options and output format.

Research a topic via videos

Search YouTube for videos on a topic, then pull transcripts from the most relevant ones.

# Search for videos
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs search "QUERY" 10

# Then get the transcript of a promising result
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs transcript VIDEO_ID

Explore a channel

See what a channel is about and what they have been publishing recently.

# Channel info (description, subscriber count)
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs channel HANDLE

# Recent uploads
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs channel-videos HANDLE 10

Read audience reactions

See what viewers are saying in the comments.

# Top comments (default 20)
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs comments VIDEO_ID

# More comments
node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs comments VIDEO_ID 50

Browse a playlist

node ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/youtube-tools/youtube.mjs playlist PLAYLIST_ID

Handling URLs

The url command auto-detects the content type from any YouTube URL:

URL Pattern	What it returns
youtube.com/watch?v= / youtu.be/	Video metadata + transcript
youtube.com/shorts/ / youtube.com/live/	Video metadata + transcript
youtube.com/@handle	Channel info + recent videos
youtube.com/playlist?list=	Playlist contents
youtube.com/results?search_query=	Search results

Important notes

• All commands output clean JSON.
• Transcripts show available languages and whether captions are auto-generated.
• If captions are unavailable, the error message suggests alternatives.
• Video metadata includes chapters extracted from the description when available.
• See references/commands.md for the full command reference.