YouTube Access for Agents: Give Your OpenClaw a YouTube Research Assistant
You have an OpenClaw that can write code, manage email, post to Twitter. But ask it about a YouTube video and you get silence. This skill fixes that.
You have an OpenClaw agent that can write code, manage your email, post to Twitter, and remember everything. But ask it about a YouTube video and you will get silence. YouTube has always been a gap in agent workflows — until now.
YouTube Access for Agents is a skill that gives your OpenClaw full access to the YouTube ecosystem: transcripts, search, channels, playlists, and metadata. No Google API setup. No OAuth. No quota headaches. Just a free skill and a free API key, and your agent becomes a YouTube research machine.
Key Takeaways
- YouTube Access for Agents gives your OpenClaw the ability to search videos, fetch transcripts, browse channels, and explore playlists.
- Powered by TranscriptAPI.com — no Google API keys or OAuth required.
- Free to start — 100 credits/month, no credit card needed.
- Channel browsing and handle resolution are completely free.
- The skill is free on Claw Mart — just install and go.
What This Skill Actually Does
This is not a YouTube uploader or comment manager. It is a read-only research toolkit that lets your agent consume YouTube content at scale.
Fetch transcripts from any video. Pass your agent a YouTube URL and get back the full transcript with timestamps. One credit per video. This is the heavy lifter for any research workflow — turn videos into searchable,summarizable text.
Search videos and channels. Tell your agent a topic and it will find relevant videos. Not just search results, but actual video data: titles, descriptions, thumbnails, view counts.
Browse channel uploads and get latest videos. Monitor any channel and fetch its most recent uploads. Perfect for staying on top of creators, competitors, or industry news.
Search within specific channels. Instead of searching all of YouTube, narrow to a specific channel. Find that one video from three months ago that you remember but cannot locate.
Browse playlists with pagination. Work through large playlists programmatically. Extract content from course material, curated collections, or any multi-video series.
Resolve @handles to channel IDs. Free, no credits. Turn a @username into a channel ID that you can use for all the other operations.
Why This Matters
Most agent workflows hit a wall when they need YouTube. Google official API requires setup, OAuth, and comes with quota limits that make large-scale usage painful. You either jump through hoops or you do not use YouTube data at all.
This skill bypasses all of that. It uses TranscriptAPI.com as a lightweight alternative that gives you what you need without the friction. Your agent can now:
- Research any topic by pulling transcripts from top videos
- Monitor competitors by tracking their latest uploads
- Build knowledge bases from video courses and lectures
- Verify claims by pulling the actual source content
- Summarize long-form content that would take hours to watch
This is the missing piece that makes agents genuinely useful for deep research.
Use Cases That Actually Make Sense
Here is where this skill shines:
Research automation. Give your agent a topic, have it find the most relevant videos, pull transcripts, and summarize the key points. You skip the watching and get straight to the insights.
Competitor monitoring. Point your agent at competitor channels and have it report new uploads weekly. Stay informed without the notification spam.
Course extraction. Got a YouTube playlist that is a 20-video course? Have your agent pull all the transcripts and build you a searchable knowledge base.
Content repurposing. Pull transcripts from your own videos and have your agent help you turn them into blog posts, newsletter content, or social threads.
Fact-checking. When your agent encounters a claim in your research, it can now pull the actual video and verify the context instead of relying on secondary sources.
What It Does NOT Do
It is worth being clear about the boundaries. This skill gives your agent eyes on YouTube content, but not hands.
It does not:
- Post comments or engage with content
- Upload videos
- Like, subscribe, or interact with the platform
- Manage channels or playlists (beyond reading them)
It does not manage YouTube accounts, post comments, or upload content. It is read-only access to the public YouTube ecosystem, focused on the things that matter most for agent workflows: finding content, reading content, and navigating the platform structure.
That constraint is a feature. The skill does a focused set of things, does them reliably, and does not try to be something it is not.
The Cost Math
Let us do quick math so you know exactly what you are looking at.
- The skill: $0 on Claw Mart.
- TranscriptAPI free tier: 100 credits/month, no credit card.
- Transcript fetch: 1 credit per video.
- Channel browsing, latest videos, handle resolution: Free (0 credits).
So you get unlimited channel monitoring and discovery, plus 100 transcript fetches per month, for literally zero dollars. If your workflow needs more than 100 transcripts a month, check TranscriptAPI paid tiers — but you will have validated the value long before you hit that point.
Next Steps
Here is your action plan:
- Install the skill now. It takes less than a minute. YouTube Access for Agents on Claw Mart.
- Sign up at transcriptapi.com and grab your free 100 credits.
- Pick one workflow from the ideas above (or bring your own) and build it today.
- Run it for a week. See what your agent can do when YouTube is no longer a blind spot.
Your agents are already good at thinking. Give them something worth thinking about.
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