YouTube MCP

Local, read-only MCP server for YouTube Data API v3 and YouTube Analytics API.

Guides:

• English: docs/en.md
• 中文教程：docs/zh-cn.md

Features

• Public YouTube Data API lookups with an API key.
• OAuth-based private channel reads for the authenticated user's own channel.
• YouTube Analytics reports for videos and channels.
• Local stdio MCP transport with no hosted service.

Security model

• Runs locally over stdio.
• Uses only read scopes:
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.readonly
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/yt-analytics.readonly
• Keeps Google API keys, OAuth client files, and OAuth tokens out of Git.
• Looks for credentials in ~/.config/youtube-mcp/ by default.

Never commit these files:

• ~/.config/youtube-mcp/api_key.txt
• ~/.config/youtube-mcp/client_secret.json
• ~/.config/youtube-mcp/token.json

Google setup

1. Create a Google Cloud project.
2. Enable YouTube Data API v3 and YouTube Analytics API.
3. Create an OAuth 2.0 Client ID with application type Desktop app.
4. Download the client JSON.
5. Save it as:

mkdir -p ~/.config/youtube-mcp
cp ~/Downloads/client_secret_*.json ~/.config/youtube-mcp/client_secret.json
chmod 600 ~/.config/youtube-mcp/client_secret.json

API key

For public YouTube Data API v3 calls, save the API key here:

mkdir -p ~/.config/youtube-mcp
printf '%s\n' 'YOUR_YOUTUBE_DATA_API_KEY' > ~/.config/youtube-mcp/api_key.txt
chmod 600 ~/.config/youtube-mcp/api_key.txt

The API key is used by:

• youtube_search_videos
• youtube_get_video
• youtube_get_channel

OAuth is still required for private or account-scoped tools:

• youtube_list_my_videos
• youtube_get_video_analytics
• youtube_get_channel_analytics

Run locally

From this directory:

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -e .
PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m youtube_mcp.server

Example MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "youtube_mcp.server"],
      "env": {
        "PYTHONPATH": "/absolute/path/to/youtube-mcp/src"
      }
    }
  }
}

OAuth note

youtube_auth_url returns the Google authorization URL. Open it, approve the read-only scopes, copy the authorization code, then call youtube_auth_exchange_code with that code. The token is saved at:

~/.config/youtube-mcp/token.json

Tools

• youtube_auth_status
• youtube_auth_url
• youtube_auth_exchange_code
• youtube_search_videos
• youtube_get_video
• youtube_get_channel
• youtube_list_my_videos
• youtube_get_video_analytics
• youtube_get_channel_analytics

Development

Run the tests with:

PYTHONPATH=src python3 -m unittest discover -s tests

License

MIT