The YouTube MCP server provides functionality to extract transcripts from YouTube videos.
Retrieves the transcript text from a YouTube video.
Parameters:
videoUrl: Full YouTube video URL (supports standard, shortened, and embed URLs)
Returns: Object containing:
content: Array with transcript text
Handles multiple YouTube URL formats:
- Standard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID - Shortened:
https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID - Embed:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
The server implements standard error handling:
- Invalid URLs return
ErrorCode.InvalidParams - Missing URL returns
ErrorCode.InvalidParams - Failed transcript fetches return formatted error messages
- Graceful shutdown on SIGINT
- Built using the Highlight AI MCP SDK
- Uses youtube-transcript library
- Input validation via Zod
- Runs as a stdio-based MCP server
- Supports Node.js >=18.0.0
- Only works with videos that have captions enabled
- Currently only returns English transcripts
- Rate limits depend on YouTube's API restrictions