README

YouTube Playlists MCP

A simple MCP server to manage YouTube playlist built in Typescript.

Setup

Credentials

Go to Google Cloud Console and create/select a project
Enable the YouTube Data API v3 (APIs & Services > Library)
Configure the OAuth consent screen (APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen)
- In Data Access, add the youtube and youtube.force-ssl scopes
- In Audience, add your Google account email as a test user
Create OAuth 2.0 credentials (APIs & Services > Credentials > Create Credentials > OAuth client ID)
- Application type: Web app
- Add http://localhost:3000/oauth2 as an authorized redirect URI
Download the JSON file and save it as credentials.json in the project root

Build

npm install
npm run build

Authenticate

Run the server once to sign in with your Google account.

node dist/index.js

Tokens are saved to tokens.json for future runs.

Configure Claude

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-playlists-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/youtube-playlists-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Description
`list_playlists`	List all playlists with ID, title, and video count
`get_playlist_videos`	Get all videos in a playlist
`add_video_to_playlist`	Add video to playlist by video ID
`move_video`	Move video from one playlist to another
`remove_video_from_playlist`	Remove video from playlist

Notes

Watch Later is not supported due to a YouTube API limitation
The server authenticates on startup and automatically refreshes tokens when they expire
If authentication doesn't work in Firefox, try a Chromium-based browser

youtube-playlists-mcp