YouTube Transcript Access Server

An Model Context Protocol implementation designed to facilitate the extraction of textual narratives (transcripts) associated with specific YouTube videos. This utility exposes direct programmatic pathways to video caption streams and accompanying descriptive information through a streamlined endpoint.

Deployment Utilizing Smithery

To integrate the YouTube Caption Retrieval utility into your Claude Desktop environment automatically, leveraging Smithery:

bash npx -y @smithery/cli install @kimtaeyoon83/mcp-server-youtube-transcript --client claude

Functional Modules

Available Tools

• fetch_narrative
• Procures textual transcripts from specified YouTube video resources
• Parameters:
  • identifier (string, mandatory): The complete Uniform Resource Locator (URL) for the YouTube item or its unique video identifier.
  • locale (string, optional, defaults to "en"): The designated language code for the desired subtitle track (e.g., 'fr', 'es').

Primary Capabilities

• Compatibility across various YouTube address formats
• Retrieval targeting specific linguistic subtitle tracks
• Inclusion of comprehensive descriptive data within output payloads

Setup Directives

To enable this service within your Claude Desktop configuration, incorporate the subsequent server declaration:

{ "mcpServers": { "youtube-transcript": { "command": "npx", "args": ["-y", "@kimtaeyoon83/mcp-server-youtube-transcript"] } } }

Installation via Utility Tool

mcp-get An executable utility designed for the management and deployment of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers.

shell npx @michaellatman/mcp-get@latest install @kimtaeyoon83/mcp-server-youtube-transcript

Curated MCP Server Listings

awesome-mcp-servers A selectively gathered repository of noteworthy Model Context Protocol (MCP) services.

Development Lifecycle

Required Preconditions

• Execution runtime environment: Node.js version 18 or newer
• Package manager: npm or yarn

Initialization Steps

Install necessary dependencies: bash npm install

Compile the server artifacts: bash npm run build

For continuous development with automated recompilation: bash npm run watch

Verification

Execute unit and integration tests: bash npm test

Troubleshooting

Given that MCP servers interface via standard input/output streams, debugging presents unique difficulties. We advise utilizing the dedicated MCP Inspector tool during development:

bash npm run inspector

Evaluation Execution

The evals package bootstraps an MCP client to run the primary index file, eliminating the need for rebuilds between test runs. Environment variables can be injected by prefixing the execution command. Comprehensive documentation is available here.

bash OPENAI_API_KEY=your-key npx mcp-eval src/evals/evals.ts src/index.ts

Exception Handling Protocols

The service incorporates comprehensive mechanisms to manage anticipated failures: - Invalid Uniform Resource Locators or identifiers provided - Transcripts that are temporarily or permanently inaccessible - Issues related to requested language track availability - Communication failures originating from the network layer

Operational Demonstrations

1. Extracting a transcript using the full video URL: typescript await server.callTool("fetch_narrative", { identifier: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID", locale: "en" });

2. Extracting a transcript using only the unique video ID: typescript await server.callTool("fetch_narrative", { identifier: "VIDEO_ID", locale: "ko" });

3. Procedure for obtaining YouTube Subtitles within the Claude Desktop Interface

chat: https://youtu.be/ODaHJzOyVCQ?si=aXkJgso96Deri0aB Retrieve subtitles

Security Measures

Key security practices implemented by this service: - Rigorous validation applied to all incoming arguments - Graceful degradation when encountering YouTube API errors - Enforced time constraints (timeouts) for all caption retrieval operations - Provision of explicit, informative error messages for diagnostic purposes

Licensing Information

This MCP service is distributed under the terms of the MIT License. Consult the LICENSE file for definitive terms.

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