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YouTube Translate MCP

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from brianshin22

Access YouTube video transcripts and translations using the YouTube Translate API.

🔥🔥🔥✓ VerifiedAccount requiredAdvanced setup
#automation#devops#git#translation#video-editing

YouTube Translate MCP

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A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for accessing the YouTube Translate API, allowing you to obtain transcripts, translations, and summaries of YouTube videos.

Features

  • Get transcripts of YouTube videos
  • Translate transcripts to different languages
  • Generate subtitles in SRT or VTT format
  • Create summaries of video content
  • Search for specific content within videos

Docker

You can also run the server using Docker:

Copy & paste — that's it
# Build the Docker image
docker build -t youtube-translate-mcp .

# Run with stdio transport
docker run -e YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=your_api_key youtube-translate-mcp

# Run with SSE transport
docker run -p 8000:8000 -e YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY=your_api_key youtube-translate-mcp --transport sse

Environment Variables

  • YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY: Required. Your API key for accessing the YouTube Translate API.

Development

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.12+
  • Docker (optional)

Setup

Copy & paste — that's it
# Create and activate a virtual environment using uv (recommended)
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate

# Install dependencies using uv
uv pip install -e .

# Alternatively, with standard tools
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate  # On Windows: .venv\Scripts\activate
pip install -e .

Testing with Claude Desktop

To test with Claude Desktop (macOS/Windows only), you'll need to add your server to the Claude Desktop configuration file located at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json.

Method 1: Local Development

Use this method if you want to test your local development version:

Copy & paste — that's it
{
    "mcpServers": {
        "youtube-translate": {
            "command": "uv",
            "args": [
                "--directory",
                "/ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/youtube-translate-mcp",
                "run",
                "-m", "youtube_translate_mcp"
            ],
            "env": {
              "YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY"
            }
        }
    }
}

Make sure to replace /ABSOLUTE/PATH/TO/youtube-translate-mcp with the actual path to your project directory.

Method 2: Docker-based Testing

If you prefer to test using Docker (recommended for more reproducible testing):

Copy & paste — that's it
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-translate": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY",
        "youtube-translate-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "YOUTUBE_TRANSLATE_API_KEY": "YOUR_API_KEY"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your actual YouTube Translate API key.

For more information on using MCP servers with Claude Desktop, see the MCP documentation.

Debugging

  • The normal MCP Inspector has a built in timeout for MCP tool calls, which is generally too short for these video processing calls (as of March 13, 2025). Better to use Claude Desktop and look at the MCP logs from Claude at ~/Library/Logs/Claude/mcp-server-{asfasf}.log.
  • Can do tail -f {log-file}.log to follow as you interact with Claude.

License

MIT