YouTube Transcript API

MCP-compatible server for retrieving YouTube video transcripts.

Installation

# Clone repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd youtube-transcript-api

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Create .env file
cp .env.example .env

Running

# Development mode
npm run dev

# Production mode
npm start

By default, the server runs on port 3000. You can change the port by setting the PORT environment variable in the .env file.

API Endpoints

Get Video Transcript

URL: /api/youtube/transcript Method: POST Content-Type: application/json

Request Body:

{
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

or

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ"
}

Optional Parameters:

• lang: Language code for transcript (e.g., "en", "ru", "fr")
• generateIfNotFound: Boolean indicating whether to generate captions if not found (default: true)

Successful Response:

{
  "success": true,
  "data": {
    "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
    "transcript": [
      {
        "text": "Never gonna give you up",
        "start": 15.5,
        "duration": 2.3
      },
      {
        "text": "Never gonna let you down",
        "start": 17.8,
        "duration": 2.1
      }
      // ...
    ],
    "generated": false
  }
}

Errors:

• 400 Bad Request: Invalid URL or video ID
• 404 Not Found: Video not found or no captions available (and generation disabled)
• 500 Internal Server Error: Server error or caption generation error

Caption Generation

If captions are not found on YouTube, the server can automatically generate them using speech recognition. For this:

1. Audio is extracted from the video using ytdl-core
2. Audio is converted to WAV format using ffmpeg
3. Speech is recognized using Whisper API

To disable automatic caption generation, set the generateIfNotFound parameter to false:

{
  "videoId": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "generateIfNotFound": false
}

Usage Examples

cURL

curl -X POST http://localhost:3000/api/youtube/transcript \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"}'

JavaScript (Fetch API)

fetch('http://localhost:3000/api/youtube/transcript', {
  method: 'POST',
  headers: {
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    videoId: 'dQw4w9WgXcQ',
    lang: 'en', // optional
    generateIfNotFound: true // optional
  }),
})
.then(response => response.json())
.then(data => console.log(data))
.catch(error => console.error('Error:', error));

License

ISC