Youtube

Call the YouTube Data API v3 with curl + jq. The user's OAuth bearer token is in $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN; every call needs it as Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN. Base URL: https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3.

The token always carries youtube.readonly plus identity scopes (openid email profile); if the user opted in at install it also carries youtube.upload (publish videos).

Responses are standard JSON; failures surface as {"error": {"code": 401|403|..., "message": "..."}} — show that error verbatim. 401 → token expired, the user must re-connect the YouTube connector. 403 insufficientPermissions on an upload → the user did not grant youtube.upload; ask them to re-connect with the upload box checked.

Always start with the channel check to confirm the connection works and learn which channel you're operating against.

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=snippet,statistics,contentDetails&mine=true" \
  | jq '.items[0] | {title: .snippet.title, subs: .statistics.subscriberCount, views: .statistics.viewCount, uploads: .contentDetails.relatedPlaylists.uploads}'

Search YouTube

# Public search (any video). type can be video|channel|playlist.
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  --data-urlencode "q=ai video automation" \
  --data-urlencode "part=snippet" \
  --data-urlencode "type=video" \
  --data-urlencode "maxResults=10" \
  -G "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/search" \
  | jq '.items[] | {videoId: .id.videoId, title: .snippet.title, channel: .snippet.channelTitle, published: .snippet.publishedAt}'

Add --data-urlencode "order=date|viewCount|rating|relevance" to sort, or --data-urlencode "publishedAfter=2026-01-01T00:00:00Z" to window.

See my uploaded videos

YouTube has no "list my videos" call directly — read the channel's uploads playlist, then page its items.

# 1. Get the uploads playlist id (UU... ) — same as channels call above.
UPLOADS=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=contentDetails&mine=true" \
  | jq -r '.items[0].contentDetails.relatedPlaylists.uploads')

# 2. List recent uploads (50/page; follow .nextPageToken for more).
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  -G "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/playlistItems" \
  --data-urlencode "part=snippet,contentDetails" \
  --data-urlencode "playlistId=$UPLOADS" \
  --data-urlencode "maxResults=50" \
  | jq '.items[] | {videoId: .contentDetails.videoId, title: .snippet.title, published: .snippet.publishedAt}'

Paginate by passing --data-urlencode "pageToken=$PAGE_TOKEN" with the .nextPageToken from the previous response.

Video stats (views / likes / comments)

# Accepts a comma-separated id list.
curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  -G "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/videos" \
  --data-urlencode "part=snippet,statistics,status" \
  --data-urlencode "id=VIDEO_ID_1,VIDEO_ID_2" \
  | jq '.items[] | {title: .snippet.title, views: .statistics.viewCount, likes: .statistics.likeCount, comments: .statistics.commentCount, privacy: .status.privacyStatus}'

Read comments on a video

curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  -G "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/commentThreads" \
  --data-urlencode "part=snippet" \
  --data-urlencode "videoId=VIDEO_ID" \
  --data-urlencode "maxResults=20" \
  --data-urlencode "order=relevance" \
  | jq '.items[] | .snippet.topLevelComment.snippet | {author: .authorDisplayName, text: .textDisplay, likes: .likeCount}'

Upload a video (needs youtube.upload)

Confirm with the user before publishing — show the title, privacy and file you're about to upload. Uploads are a two-step resumable flow: init with metadata → PUT the bytes.

If the source is a URL, fetch it first

Videos produced by a generation API (Maestro, Seedance, Veo, …) come back as a CDN URL, not a local file. Download it and verify you actually got a video before starting the upload:

SRC="https://example.cdn.acedata.cloud/path/video.mp4"
FILE=$(mktemp)   # plain mktemp — `mktemp /tmp/x-XXXXXX.mp4` is not portable

# -f: fail on 4xx/5xx instead of saving the error page. -L: follow CDN redirects.
curl -fsSL -o "$FILE" -w 'http=%{http_code} size=%{size_download}\n' "$SRC"

# Two distinct failures, two distinct messages — a 404/DNS error is a bad URL,
# not a bad video, and saying so saves the next step from misdiagnosing it.
[ -s "$FILE" ] \
  || { echo "download failed (see http= above) — nothing to upload"; rm -f "$FILE"; exit 1; }

# A 200 can still be an HTML interstitial or an expired-link page. Reject that
# rather than allow-listing one container, so WebM/MOV/AVI still pass. `grep -a`
# is required — without it grep treats a binary header as "no match".
head -c 512 "$FILE" | grep -qai '<html\|<!doctype' \
  && { echo "got an HTML page, not a video"; rm -f "$FILE"; exit 1; }

--upload-file ignores the filename; YouTube keys off the Content-Type: video/* header, so the extensionless temp file is fine.

The upload itself

# Falls back to the placeholder only if the fetch step above didn't set FILE.
FILE="${FILE:-/path/to/video.mp4}"
TITLE="My title"
DESC="My description"
# privacyStatus: public | unlisted | private
read -r -d '' META <<JSON
{"snippet":{"title":"$TITLE","description":"$DESC","categoryId":"22"},
 "status":{"privacyStatus":"unlisted","selfDeclaredMadeForKids":false}}
JSON

# 1. Init resumable session -> capture the upload URL from the Location header.
UPLOAD_URL=$(curl -sS -D - -o /dev/null \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8" \
  -H "X-Upload-Content-Type: video/*" \
  -X POST "https://www.googleapis.com/upload/youtube/v3/videos?uploadType=resumable&part=snippet,status" \
  -d "$META" | tr -d '\r' | awk '/^[Ll]ocation:/{print $2}')

# 2. Upload the bytes -> returns the created video resource (has .id).
RESULT=$(curl -sS -H "Authorization: Bearer $GOOGLE_YOUTUBE_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: video/*" \
  -X PUT --upload-file "$FILE" "$UPLOAD_URL")
echo "$RESULT" | jq -e .id >/dev/null 2>&1 \
  || { echo "upload failed: $(echo "$RESULT" | jq -r '.error.message' 2>/dev/null || echo "$RESULT")"; exit 1; }
echo "$RESULT" | jq '{id: .id, url: ("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=" + .id), privacy: .status.privacyStatus}'

Delete a downloaded temp file only after you've confirmed an id came back (echo "$RESULT" | jq -e .id >/dev/null && rm -f "$FILE"). On a 401/403 or a dropped connection the download is still good and re-uploading beats re-fetching a few hundred MB.

categoryId 22 = "People & Blogs" (a safe default). To set a custom thumbnail (needs the file to be processed first), call POST /upload/youtube/v3/thumbnails/set?videoId=VIDEO_ID with the image.

Gotchas

• Quota: the Data API is quota-metered (default 10,000 units/day). A search costs 100 units; an upload costs ~1,600. A burst of searches can exhaust the daily quota → 403 quotaExceeded; surface it plainly.
• No "my videos" endpoint — always go via the uploads playlist.
• search results are eventually-consistent — a freshly uploaded video may not appear in search for minutes/hours; read it via the uploads playlist or by id instead.
• Uploaded videos start in uploaded/processing state; stats are 0 until processing completes.