| name | yt-search |
| description | Search YouTube directly from Claude Code. Returns structured results with titles, channels, view counts, duration, and links. Use when user asks to search YouTube, find videos, or uses /yt-search. |
| user_invocable | true |
| arguments | query to search for on YouTube |
YouTube Search Skill
Search YouTube using yt-dlp and return structured results.
Usage
The user provides a search query as the argument. Examples:
/yt-search claude code tutorial/yt-search react server components 2026
How to Execute
- Take the user's query from the ARGUMENTS section
- Run the search command below with the query
- Parse the JSON output and format as a markdown table
- Present results to the user
Search Command
PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 python -m yt_dlp "ytsearch10:<QUERY>" --flat-playlist -j 2>/dev/null
- Replace
<QUERY> with the user's search terms
- Default: 10 results. User can request more/less (e.g. "top 5 results for X")
- Each line of output is a separate JSON object
Output Format
Present results as a markdown table:
| # | Title | Channel | Views | Duration | Link |
|---|-------|---------|-------|----------|------|
| 1 | Video Title | Channel Name | 303K | 35:49 | [Watch](url) |
Field Mapping
| Table Column | JSON Field |
|---|
| Title | title (truncate to 60 chars if needed) |
| Channel | channel |
| Views | view_count (format: 1.2M, 303K, etc.) |
| Duration | duration_string |
| Link | url or webpage_url |
View Count Formatting
-
= 1,000,000 → 1.2M
-
= 1,000 → 303K
- < 1,000 → show as-is
Error Handling
- If yt-dlp is not installed: tell user to run
pip install yt-dlp
- If no results: tell user no videos found for that query
- If command fails: show the error message
Tips
- Add year to query for recent content (e.g. "react 2026")
- Use quotes in query for exact phrases
- User can ask for more results: "search 20 results for X"
