Youtube Search

YouTube Search Skill

Search YouTube for videos and return structured results using yt-dlp.

Trigger

Use this skill when the user wants to:

• Search YouTube for videos on a topic
• Find top YouTube videos about a query
• Research what's popular on YouTube about a subject
• Get video metadata (views, channel, duration, description) for analysis

How to Use

When triggered, call the Bash tool to run yt-dlp with the search query.

Basic Search

yt-dlp "ytsearch10:{QUERY}" \
  --dump-json \
  --no-download \
  --flat-playlist \
  --no-warnings \
  2>/dev/null

Each line of output is a JSON object. Parse and return structured results.

Result Fields to Extract

From each JSON object, extract:

• id → YouTube video ID
• title → Video title
• url → Full URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={id}
• view_count → Number of views (may be null for search results)
• channel → Channel name
• channel_url → Channel URL
• duration → Duration in seconds (convert to MM:SS)
• description → First 300 chars of description
• upload_date → Date in YYYYMMDD format
• like_count → Likes (may be null)

Output Format

Return results as a structured markdown list:

## YouTube Search Results: "{query}"

Found {N} videos

| # | Title | Channel | Views | Duration |
|---|-------|---------|-------|----------|
| 1 | [Title](URL) | Channel Name | 1.2M | 12:34 |
...

### Full Details

**1. [Video Title](URL)**
- Channel: Channel Name
- Views: 1,234,567
- Duration: 12:34
- Published: 2024-03-15
- Description: First 300 chars...

Parameters

• query — Search query string (required)
• limit — Number of results (default: 10, max: 50)
• sort_by — Sort preference: relevance (default), views, date

Notes

• yt-dlp is installed at /opt/homebrew/bin/yt-dlp
• Search results may not include view counts (YouTube API limitation with yt-dlp search)
• For view counts, a second pass fetching individual video metadata may be needed
• If view counts are needed: yt-dlp --dump-json "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v={id}"

Example Usage

User: "Search YouTube for the top 5 videos about Claude Code MCP servers"

yt-dlp "ytsearch5:Claude Code MCP servers" --dump-json --no-download --flat-playlist --no-warnings 2>/dev/null

Parse JSON output → return structured table + details.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: TheVeller
• Source: TheVeller/claude-skills
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.