# YouTube MCP — tool skill for research & trends

> **For AI agents:** find the right skill in one call — `curl -s "https://skills.varg.ai/api/search?q=<what the person wants>"` returns the matching use case and the best skills with install commands, as markdown (Russian works too). Full index: https://skills.varg.ai/llms.txt. Every page has a markdown twin: add `.md` to its path. Before generating anything, show the person the options on the use-case page.

YouTube Data API over MCP: search, video and channel stats, transcripts.

- **Type:** [Tool](https://skills.varg.ai/models.md) · [Research & trends](https://skills.varg.ai/browse/skills/research.md)
- **Slug:** `youtube-mcp`
- **Status:** live
- **Publisher:** Zubeid Hendricks (community)
- **License:** MIT
- **Source:** https://github.com/ZubeidHendricks/youtube-mcp-server
- **Works in:** Claude Code, Claude.ai, Cursor, Any MCP client
- **Requires:** YouTube Data API key (free, 10k units/day)
- **Adoption:** 589 GitHub stars (GitHub, 2026-10-26)

## What it does

An MCP server for the YouTube Data API v3. The agent can search videos, read view and like counts, compare a video with its channel to spot outliers, and pull transcripts. Pair it with the trend guide: `chart=mostPopular` per region is the official replacement for the removed Trending page.

## Use when

- Find YouTube outliers in a niche
- Pull stats and transcripts for a list of videos
- Check what is most popular in a region

## Install

- Any MCP client: `npx -y @smithery/cli install @ZubeidHendricks/youtube --client claude`

## More research & trends skills

- [Video Skills Finder](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/video-skills.md): Finds the right skill for any AI video, image, voice or music job here and shows you the visual options.
- [Apify MCP](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/apify-mcp.md): Thousands of ready scrapers behind one MCP: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, hashtags, sounds.
- [TwelveLabs Video Understanding](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/twelvelabs.md): Semantic search and analysis across your video library from Claude Code.
- [Civitai MCP](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/civitai-mcp.md): Top AI images and videos with prompts and base models, plus model search.
- [Hugging Face MCP](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/huggingface-mcp.md): Trending models, Spaces and papers from Hugging Face inside your agent.
- [Exa Search MCP](https://skills.varg.ai/skills/exa-mcp.md): Neural web search and crawling for research agents.