ytt-mcp: YouTube Transcript

You can run the YouTube Transcript MCP Server to fetch transcripts from YouTube videos and interact with it from MCP clients. It supports convenient local testing, CLI-driven startup with uvx, and integration with tools like Claude Desktop and Raycast for quick access.

How to use

To use the YouTube Transcript MCP Server, start the MCP runtime and load the server so your MCP clients can communicate with it. The server is designed to be invoked through an MCP client workflow via a local stdio server. After starting, you can reference the server by its MCP name and send requests such as fetching a transcript, summarizing, or breaking down the content by themes.

How to install

Prerequisites: you will need access to the MCP runtime environment that supports stdio MCP servers and the uvx-enabled startup flow. Ensure you have the runtime installed so you can invoke commands via uvx.

Step 1
Install and prepare the MCP runtime so you can run stdio-based MCP servers. The most convenient approach is to use the built-in runtime and then start the server with the uvx command.

Step 2
Start the server using the standard stdio startup flow. The recommended way is to run the MCP package with the uvx command and specify the server name as shown in the configuration snippet.

Additional configuration and usage notes

Claude Desktop integration shows how you wire the MCP server into a local configuration. Add the following MCP server entry to your claude-desktop-config.json to run the server via uvx.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    …<rest of the config>…
    "ytt-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["ytt-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Relaunch Claude configuration after adding the entry, then you can try out the server directly from Claude as shown in the example setup.

Raycast users can install the MCP server through the MCP extension and refer to the server as @youtube-transcript. You can use it in Raycast AI Commands to fetch and summarize transcripts from a YouTube URL copied to the clipboard. The workflow in Raycast resembles requesting the transcript and then asking for a structured summary.

Examples and quick prompts

Fetch and summarize a transcript from a YouTube URL using a concise prompt: @youtube-transcript fetch the Youtube transcript of the video: {clipboard | raw} followed by a structured summary request in the format: ### Key Takeaways with exactly three short bullets, and a Theme Wise Breakdown to separate sections by themes.

Notes on test and development tooling

For development and debugging, you can start a dev server instance locally to inspect the endpoints and test requests. A common dev command is: uv run fastmcp dev ytt_mcp.py which generates a localhost URL for testing.

Available tools

fetch_transcript

Fetches the transcript for a given YouTube video URL or ID from the YouTube Transcript MCP Server.

summarize_transcript

Generates a comprehensive summary of the fetched transcript with an optional structured format.

theme_wise_breakdown

Divides the transcript into thematic sections and provides a guided breakdown in the same order as the source content.