youtube-api
YouTube API access without the official API quota hassle — transcripts, search, channels, playlists, and metadata with no Google API key needed. Use when the user needs YouTube data programmatically, wants to avoid Google API quotas, or asks for "youtube api", "get video data", "youtube without api key", "no quota youtube".
Why use this skill?
Access YouTube search, transcripts, and channel data without Google API quota limits. Easy setup for OpenClaw agents to fetch metadata programmatically.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/therohitdas/youtube-apiWhat This Skill Does
The youtube-api skill for OpenClaw provides a robust, quota-free gateway to YouTube data. Unlike the official Google YouTube Data API, which enforces strict daily quotas and requires complex Google Cloud Platform configuration, this skill leverages TranscriptAPI.com to enable programmatic access to video metadata, transcripts, search results, and channel information. It abstracts away authentication complexities by providing built-in CLI scripts for registering and verifying credentials, ultimately storing them securely in your local OpenClaw configuration file. Whether you are building an AI researcher agent, a content aggregator, or a tool to analyze video transcripts for NLP tasks, this skill ensures your pipeline remains functional without the overhead of Google API limitations.
Installation
To integrate this skill into your environment, use the OpenClaw hub CLI:
clawhub install openclaw/skills/skills/therohitdas/youtube-api
Post-installation, ensure your API credentials are configured. If you do not have an existing key, the agent will prompt you to run the registration script. You can initialize this by providing your email address to the tapi-auth.js script, which sends a secure OTP for verification. Once verified, the skill writes your API key to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (with an automatic backup created at ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.bak), making it instantly available for your agent workflows.
Use Cases
- Educational Research: Automatically fetch transcripts of long-form lectures or tutorials to feed into an LLM for summarization or Q&A.
- Content Monitoring: Track the latest video uploads from specific channels or monitor niche search results for automated notification systems.
- Video Analytics: Extract metadata from playlists or channel uploads for data analysis, sentiment tracking, or building custom recommendation engines.
- Bypassing Quotas: Ideal for developers hitting "403 Rate Limit Exceeded" errors with standard Google API keys during high-volume data scraping.
Example Prompts
- "Find the top 10 Python tutorial videos on YouTube and list their titles."
- "Get the full transcript for this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ and summarize the key points."
- "List the five most recent videos published by the @TED channel and provide their URLs."
Tips & Limitations
- Free vs. Paid: Note that some operations, like channel resolution and fetching the latest video, are free, while others like fetching transcripts or channel uploads consume 1 credit per request.
- Persistence: If you prefer using the skill outside of the OpenClaw agent context, you can set the
TRANSCRIPT_API_KEYenvironment variable in your shell profile. - Security: Always verify your source when providing your email during the registration process. The agent will handle file writes, but it is good practice to keep your
~/.openclaw/directory restricted to your user permissions.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-therohitdas-youtube-api": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access, file-write, file-read, external-api
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