youtube-research

name	youtube-research
description	Research YouTube channel summaries, audience comment samples, downloadable video records, and public videos using PostPlus Cloud collection service. Use this when the user wants YouTube account research or public video metrics.
metadata	{"postplus":{"familyId":"platform-research","familyName":"LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube"}}

YouTube Research

Follow shared public skill rules in:

• postplus-shared public skill rules

Use this skill when the request is about YouTube channels, audience proxies, or public videos.

This skill is for:

• collecting channel metadata and subscriber counts
• collecting audience comment samples from a specific video
• collecting one or more public YouTube video URLs
• discovering a small YouTube video set from a broad query
• normalizing YouTube video metrics into local artifacts
• writing local raw payloads, normalized datasets, and short markdown summaries

This skill is not for:

• LinkedIn collection
• Facebook collection
• TikTok, Instagram, or X workflows
• publishing, deleting, or scheduling posts
• promising a subscriber list that YouTube does not expose publicly

Before Collection Boundary

Before audience research, tell the user that YouTube does not expose subscriber identities through the released collection surface. Use channel metadata and comments as public proxies, and do not present comment authors as the subscriber base.

PostPlus Cloud Boundary

This skill depends on host-managed collection capability for the corresponding collection keys.

In the PostPlus runtime:

• do not probe or print provider secrets
• do not ask the user to export them inside chat
• if a collection key returns a stable capability/network hard error, stop immediately instead of trying alternate shell commands

Default Collection Keys

Use these hosted collection keys by default:

• channel metadata and subscriber counts

  • collection key: youtube-channel-summary
  • use for channel metadata and subscriber counts
  • tested input shape:
    • channels = ["@Google"]
    • maxVideosPerChannel = 0
    • includeChannelInfo = true
    • includeVideos = false
  • current observed output fields include:
    • channelId
    • channelName
    • channelHandle
    • subscriberCount
    • totalVideos
    • avatarUrl
    • bannerUrl

• audience comments collection

  • collection key: youtube-comments
  • use for audience proxy research from comments on a specific video or Shorts URL
  • tested input shape:
    • startUrls = ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<video-id>"]
    • sort
    • maxItems
  • current observed output fields include:
    • id
    • text
    • likeCount
    • replyCount
    • publishedTime
    • author

• downloadable video records

  • collection key: youtube-video-download
  • use when the workflow needs the rented downloader-backed record for explicit video URLs

Use comments as an audience proxy when subscriber identities are not public.

Failure Posture

• fail if the request includes non-YouTube platforms
• fail if no YouTube public URLs can be discovered
• fail if hosted content collection returns malformed items without stable URL or id fields
• fail if the channel collection cannot resolve the channel handle or URL
• keep raw responses for debugging

Recommended Workflow

1. For channel research, start with youtube-channel-summary.
2. For audience research, collect a small comments sample from representative videos with youtube-comments.
3. For broad public video discovery, use the hosted content collection scripts below.

Do not present comment authors as a full subscriber list.

Public Skill Execution Contract

• keep collection briefs, raw datasets, normalized outputs, and summary caches under <work-folder>/.postplus/youtube-research/
• keep only final user-facing summaries or shortlist exports outside .postplus/
• compile a small channel, comment, or public-video brief before the expensive collection step
• start with a bounded first pass:
  • one channel batch
  • one comments batch
  • one public video plan

Public Video Implementation

Read before implementation:

• skills/20-research/youtube-research/references/normalized-schema.md

Use these entrypoints:

• skills/20-research/youtube-research/scripts/run_youtube_video_collection.mjs

Hosted Collection Note

Use the shared hosted collection runner for actor calls:

• ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/_postplus_shared/00-core/shared-collection/scripts/collection_actor_run.mjs