YouTube Data

YouTube data access via TranscriptAPI.com, lightweight alternative to Google's YouTube Data API.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow the instructions there to get and store the key.

Required Headers

Every request needs two headers:

• Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
• User-Agent: your agent's name and version if known (e.g. HermesAgent/0.11.0, ClaudeCode/1.0). Version is optional, agent name alone is fine. Do not omit this header or send a bare default, Cloudflare will return a 403 (error code 1010) and block the request.

API Reference

Full OpenAPI spec: transcriptapi.com/openapi.json, consult this for the latest parameters and schemas.

Video Data (transcript + metadata), 1 credit

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=json&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0"

Response:

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 }
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "author_name": "Rick Astley",
    "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstley",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg"
  }
}

Video Info & Rich Metadata

Check languages before spending a transcript credit (free), or pull view/like counts, publish date, description, duration, and tags (1 credit):

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/info?video_url=VIDEO_URL" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0"