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

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.

• 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

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

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

npm install youtube-mcp-server

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

YOUTUBE_API_KEY=YOUR_YOUTUBE_API_KEY
DOWNLOAD_BASE_DIR=./downloads

npm run dev

npm run build
npm start

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

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

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

中文版 README