YouTube Data CLI Skill

You have access to youtube-data-cli, a CLI for the YouTube Data API v3 covering all 20 resources with 52 commands. Use it to search YouTube, manage channels/videos/playlists/comments/subscriptions, upload videos and captions, set thumbnails, and more.

Quick start

# Check if the CLI is available
youtube-data-cli --help

# Search for videos
youtube-data-cli search --q "node.js tutorial" --type video --max-results 5

# Get a channel's public data
youtube-data-cli channels UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If the CLI is not installed, install it:

npm install -g youtube-data-cli

Authentication

Credentials are resolved in this order:

1. --credentials <path> flag (per-command)
2. YOUTUBE_API_KEY, YOUTUBE_CLIENT_ID, YOUTUBE_CLIENT_SECRET, YOUTUBE_REFRESH_TOKEN env vars
3. ~/.config/youtube-data-cli/credentials.json (auto-detected)

Recommended OAuth scope: https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube (full access). Add https://www.googleapis.com/auth/youtube.upload if using narrower scopes but need video uploads.

Important: Service accounts do NOT work with YouTube APIs. You must use OAuth 2.0 with a refresh token.

Output format

All commands output pretty-printed JSON by default. Use --format compact for single-line JSON.

Global options:

• --format <format> -- json (default, pretty-printed) or compact (single-line)
• --credentials <path> -- path to credentials JSON file

Errors are written to stderr as JSON with an error field and a non-zero exit code.

Commands reference

search

Search YouTube for videos, channels, and playlists.

youtube-data-cli search --q "query" [--type video] [--max-results 10] [--order viewCount]

Key options: --q (required), --type, --max-results, --order, --channel-id, --page-token, --published-after, --published-before, --region-code, --relevance-language, --safe-search, --video-duration, --event-type

channels / channels-update

Get or update channel details.

youtube-data-cli channels UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
youtube-data-cli channels                    # your own channel (OAuth)
youtube-data-cli channels-update --id UCxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --description "New desc" --country US

videos / videos-insert / videos-update / videos-delete

Get, upload, update, or delete videos.