YouTube search

Search YouTube from the agent with YTAPI, then pull transcripts of what you find.

Setup

If YTAPI_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow it: the user either pastes a key or you create a free account with their email (200 credits, no card). Send the key as Authorization: Bearer $YTAPI_API_KEY and never print it.

Search (1 credit per page)

curl -s -G "https://api.ytapi.dev/v1/search" \
  --data-urlencode "q=QUERY" -d type=video -d limit=20 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $YTAPI_API_KEY"

Param	Values
q	Search text
type	all, video, channel, playlist, shorts, movie
upload_date	hour, today, week, month, year
duration	short (under 4 min), medium, long (over 20 min)
sort_by	relevance, upload_date, view_count, rating
limit	Results per page, 1 to 50 (default 20)
cursor	next_cursor from the previous page, when has_more is true

Results are in items: id, type, title, author, channel_id, length_seconds, view_count_text, published_text.

Free autocomplete: GET /v1/search/suggestions?q=TEXT.

Then read the videos (1 credit each)

curl -s "https://api.ytapi.dev/v1/transcripts?video_id=VIDEO_ID&format=text" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $YTAPI_API_KEY"

Pick the few most relevant results by title, channel and length before fetching transcripts; each transcript costs a credit.

Credits and errors

Only successful responses use credits; errors are free. New accounts get 200 free credits. Until a credit pack is bought, a key can make 1 request per second and 100 per day (UTC); 429 daily_limit_exceeded means that day's limit is used up (it resets at 00:00 UTC; any pack removes it). 402 insufficient_credits means the balance is empty: packs from $9 at https://ytapi.dev/?utm_source=skill#pricing. 401 means the key is missing or wrong.

For video details, search, channels, playlists and batches in one skill, install ytapi. Full reference: https://docs.ytapi.dev