extractTranscriptLABSCO SUMMARY
States its limits up front.
The constraints are the useful part of the documentation: public videos only, captions must exist, and auto-generated ones may be imperfect. That means the two failure modes you will hit — no video ID resolved, or no transcript available — are named along with what to check. It is a single-purpose tool with no configuration, which is exactly right when the job is getting text out of a video.
What it is
A TypeScript MCP server that pulls transcripts out of YouTube videos, built for Cursor and Claude Desktop. One input — the video URL — and the text comes back.
What you get
- Transcript extraction from any public YouTube video, taking the video URL as input
- A stdio server that registers as a plain command entry in Cursor or Claude Desktop
Requirements
No account and no key. Node.js v16 or higher and pnpm or npm: clone, install, run the build, then point your client at the absolute path of build/index.js with node. Two limits worth knowing before you rely on it: only public videos work, and the video must have captions or subtitles enabled — auto-generated captions come through but are not always accurate.
Setup effort
Build from source — git clone https://github.com/MalikElate/yt-description-mcp.git
USE CASES
01
Summarising a video without watching it
Extract the transcript from the URL and let the assistant work from the text.
02
Quoting something said in a talk
Pull the transcript and find the passage, rather than scrubbing through the video.
03
Feeding video content into a longer piece of work
Extract the text so it can be analysed, compared or cited alongside written sources.
1 tool
Listed in project docs. Your client may show a different list.
BEFORE YOU INSTALL
What to know first
Tools you get
1 tool named in the project's documentation.
Requires
- Node.js v16 or higher
- pnpm (recommended) or npm
Where it runs
Both documented clients run the server on your machine.
INSTALLATION
Connect your client
You clone and build this one yourself.
Server setup
Clone the repository
TERMINAL
git clone https://github.com/MalikElate/yt-description-mcp.git
cd yt-description-mcpInstall dependencies
TERMINAL
pnpm installBuild the project
TERMINAL
pnpm run buildMCP Clients
Cursor, Claude Desktop
JSON
{
"mcpServers": {
"youtube-transcript": {
"command": "node",
"args": [
"<YOUR_PATH_TO_YT_DESCRIPTION_MCP>/build/index.js"
]
}
}
}
