Youtube cli

Skill ItamarZand88/CLI-Anything-WEB/.claude/skills/youtube-cli

Searches YouTube and fetches video transcripts via the cli-web-youtube command-line tool — video search, video details (views, duration, description, keywords), trending by category, channel info, and timestamped transcripts/captions with language selection and translation. Use when the user asks about YouTube, searching for videos, video details, trending videos, channel info, subscriber counts, or a video's transcript, captions, or subtitles. Prefer this CLI over fetching the YouTube website. No authentication required.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add ItamarZand88/CLI-Anything-WEB --skill youtube-cli

Assembled from the repository path, not quoted from the project. Check it against their README if it does not work.

SKILL.md

3.0 KB, as published. Nobody here has run it

cli-web-youtube

Search and explore YouTube from the terminal (read-only, no auth, InnerTube API). Install: pip install cli-web-youtube

Commands

Command	Purpose	Key options
`search videos QUERY`	Search videos	`-l/--limit N` (default 10)
`video get VIDEO_ID`	Video details (views, duration, description, keywords)	accepts 11-char ID or full URL
`trending list`	Trending/popular videos	`-c/--category now\|music\|gaming\|movies`, `-l/--limit N`
`channel get HANDLE`	Channel info + recent videos	accepts `@handle`, `UC...` ID, or URL
`transcript get VIDEO`	Timestamped transcript + full text	`-l/--lang CODE` (repeatable, priority order), `-t/--translate CODE`, `--text-only`; accepts ID or URL
`transcript list VIDEO`	Available caption languages	accepts ID or URL

Examples

# Search (returns id, title, channel, views, duration, published, url per video)
cli-web-youtube search videos "python tutorial" --limit 5 --json

# Video details by ID or URL
cli-web-youtube video get dQw4w9WgXcQ --json

# Trending music videos
cli-web-youtube trending list --category music --limit 10 --json

# Channel info and subscriber count
cli-web-youtube channel get @mkbhd --json | jq '{title, subscriber_count}'

# Plain-text transcript (ideal for feeding to an LLM)
cli-web-youtube transcript get dQw4w9WgXcQ --text-only

# Transcript in a preferred language, or translated, as JSON
cli-web-youtube transcript get dQw4w9WgXcQ --lang en --json
cli-web-youtube transcript get dQw4w9WgXcQ --translate en --json | jq -r '.segments[].text'

# What caption languages exist?
cli-web-youtube transcript list dQw4w9WgXcQ --json

JSON output

Every command accepts --json. Success returns the data object directly, e.g. search: {"query", "estimated_results", "videos": [...]}; video get: {"id", "title", "channel", "views", "duration_seconds", ...}; transcript get: {"video_id", "title", "language_code", "kind", "is_translated", "segment_count", "segments": [{"text", "start", "duration"}], "text"}. Errors return {"error": true, "code": "...", "message": "..."}.

Utilities

cli-web-youtube doctor [--json] self-diagnoses the local setup (install, auth, dependencies). cli-web-youtube mcp-serve serves the commands as MCP tools over stdio.

Agent tips

Video IDs are 11 characters; channel handles start with @.
Running with no subcommand opens an interactive REPL.