Runnable YouTube MCP Server

A FastMCP server for YouTube: unified video/channel/playlist info, download, and management tools for memo agents and automation.

Why this project?

Most YouTube MCP servers available are either unmaintainable, fail to compile, or are implemented only in Python and provide only basic video download features.
When building my own memo agent, I found it difficult to automatically retrieve YouTube video information for summarization and automation.
This project was created to solve that problem and provide a robust, extensible, and developer-friendly YouTube MCP server.

✨ Features

• Unified access to YouTube video, channel, and playlist information
• Download video/audio streams in various formats and qualities
• Extract and process video thumbnails
• Manage playlist content (add, remove, reorder)
• Manage video privacy status (public/private/unlisted)
• List available subtitle languages
• Designed for integration with memo agents and automation workflows
• Extensible, maintainable, and fully open source

🛠️ Available Tools

| Tool Name | Description | Status | |----------------------|-----------------------------------------------------|-------------| | describeVideo | Get video information (selectable sections) | ✅ | | getDownloadOptions | Get available download formats/qualities | ❌ | | downloadVideo | Download video/audio stream | ❌ | | extractThumbnail | Extract and process video thumbnail | ❌ | | listSubtitleLanguages| Get available subtitle languages for a video | ❌ | | manageVideoStatus | Manage video privacy status | ❌ | | describeChannel | Get public channel information | ✅ | | describePlaylist | Get public playlist information | ❌ | | managePlaylistItems | Playlist content management (add/remove/reorder) | ❌ |

Only describeVideo is currently tested and working. Others are implemented but not fully tested.

🚀 Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• YouTube Data API v3 key

Install

npm install youtube-mcp-server

Environment Variables

Create a .env file or set these variables in your environment:

YOUTUBE_API_KEY=YOUR_YOUTUBE_API_KEY
DOWNLOAD_BASE_DIR=./downloads

Run in Development

npm run dev

Run in Production

npm run build
npm start

🧩 MCP Integration Example

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "tsx",
        "/PATH/TO/YOUR_PROJECT/src/server.ts"
      ],
      "env": {
        "YOUTUBE_API_KEY": "YOUR_YOUTUBE_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

🤝 Contributing

Contributions, issues and feature requests are welcome!
Visit the issues page.

📄 License

MIT License - Copyright (c) 2025 Stephen J. Li

中文版 README