youtube-transcript-mcp

Overview

This MCP server provides tools to retrieve video transcripts from YouTube with precise timestamps. It supports multiple language preferences and offers both CLI and library usage patterns. The implementation is compatible with OpenAI SDK's tool calling format and can be deployed as either a local MCP server or a remote server via Deno Deploy.

Try asking AI

After installing, here are 5 things you can ask your AI assistant:

• get_transcript

  Extracts subtitles from YouTube videos with timestamps

  Try:Get transcript for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQTry:Retrieve YouTube video subtitles in English and PortugueseTry:Fetch captions from a YouTube video

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Installation

npx -y --package=github:lucasliet/youtube-transcript-mcp#main youtube-transcript-mcp --videoUrl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --preferredLanguages "pt-BR,en"

npm i github:lucasliet/youtube-transcript-mcp#main

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-transcript": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "--package=github:lucasliet/youtube-transcript-mcp#main", "youtube-transcript-mcp"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-transcript-remote": {
      "url": "https://youtube-transcript-mcp.deno.dev/mcp"
    }
  }
}

FAQ

What happens if a video doesn't have transcripts?

The server returns `null` for any failure cases, including videos without available transcripts.

Can I use this with OpenAI's function calling?

Yes, the library exposes tools in the format expected by OpenAI's Chat Completions API tools, with ready-to-use schemas.

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