kendreaditya/youtube

YouTube (yt-dlp)

Requires yt-dlp and jq. No API keys.

Search

# Basic — adjust number after ytsearch for result count
yt-dlp "ytsearch10:query" --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings 2>/dev/null \
  | jq -s '.[] | {title, url, channel, views: .view_count, duration: .duration_string, date: .upload_date}'

# Sort by views (fetch 20, take top 10)
yt-dlp "ytsearch20:query" --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings 2>/dev/null \
  | jq -s 'sort_by(-.view_count) | .[:10][] | {title, url, channel, views: .view_count, date: .upload_date}'

# Sort by date (newest first)
... | jq -s 'sort_by(-.upload_date) | .[:10][] | ...'

# Filter by duration (>10min = 600s, <4min = 240s)
... | jq -s '[.[] | select(.duration >= 600)] | sort_by(-.view_count) | .[:10][]'

# Filter by recency (last 30 days)
CUTOFF=$(date -v-30d +%Y%m%d 2>/dev/null || date -d "30 days ago" +%Y%m%d)
yt-dlp "ytsearch20:query" --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings 2>/dev/null \
  | jq -s --arg cutoff "$CUTOFF" '[.[] | select(.upload_date >= $cutoff)] | sort_by(-.view_count) | .[]'

# URLs only (for piping into other tools)
yt-dlp "ytsearch10:query" --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.url'

Channel listing

# Videos
yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName/videos" 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{id, title, url, views: .view_count, duration: .duration_string, date: .upload_date}'

# Shorts
yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName/shorts" 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{id, title, url, views: .view_count, date: .upload_date}'

# Both combined, sorted by date
{ yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName/videos" 2>/dev/null; \
  yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/@ChannelName/shorts" 2>/dev/null; } \
  | jq -s 'sort_by(-.upload_date) | .[] | {id, title, url, views: .view_count, date: .upload_date}'

Works with @handle, full channel URLs, or /c/ChannelName.

Playlist listing

yt-dlp --dump-json --flat-playlist --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxxxxx" 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{id, title, url, duration: .duration_string, views: .view_count}'

Full video metadata

Drop --flat-playlist for rich metadata (slower, ~1-2s/video). Includes likes, comments, subscriber count, description.

# Single video
yt-dlp --dump-json --no-download --no-warnings "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{title, channel, views: .view_count, likes: .like_count, comments: .comment_count, subs: .channel_follower_count, duration: .duration_string, date: .upload_date, description: (.description // "" | .[0:300])}'

# From search (slow)
yt-dlp "ytsearch5:query" --dump-json --no-download --no-warnings 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{title, url, channel, views: .view_count, likes: .like_count, subs: .channel_follower_count, date: .upload_date}'

Subtitles

# Download auto-generated English subs
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-lang "en" --sub-format vtt --skip-download \
  -o "/tmp/%(id)s.%(ext)s" "URL"

# Prefer manual subs, fall back to auto
yt-dlp --write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-lang "en,en-US,en-GB" --sub-format vtt --skip-download \
  -o "/tmp/%(id)s.%(ext)s" "URL"

# List available subtitle languages
yt-dlp --list-subs --no-warnings "URL" 2>/dev/null

# Get subtitle track info as JSON
yt-dlp --dump-json --no-download --no-warnings "URL" 2>/dev/null \
  | jq '{manual: (.subtitles | keys), auto: (.automatic_captions | keys)}'

VTT files saved to /tmp/VIDEO_ID.LANG.vtt. Clean with vtt2txt (from the clean skill):

# Download subs + clean to plain text
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en --sub-format vtt --skip-download \
  -o "/tmp/%(id)s.%(ext)s" "URL" && vtt2txt /tmp/VIDEO_ID.en.vtt

# Download subs + clean to markdown with metadata
vtt2txt /tmp/VIDEO_ID.en.vtt --md --title "Video Title" --id "VIDEO_ID" -o transcript.md

# Batch: multiple VTTs to one markdown
vtt2txt /tmp/*.vtt --md --heading "Research" -o combined.md

Key fields reference

Flat mode (--flat-playlist): title, id, url, channel, view_count, duration, duration_string, upload_date, description

Full mode (no --flat-playlist): adds like_count, comment_count, channel_follower_count, subtitles, automatic_captions

Null fields are common — handle with jq // "" or // 0.

Errors

| Error | Fix | |-------|-----| | No results | Broaden query | | Empty JSON / timeout | Rate limited — wait, reduce count | | 429 | Add delays, reduce batch size | | yt-dlp: command not found | uv tool install yt-dlp or pip install yt-dlp |