Channel archive → cited quotes
"He said it in some video" is not a citation. Searching inside a channel narrows hundreds of videos to a handful, and the transcripts show exactly where it was said, word for word.
What you get
- Every video where the topic comes up
- Verbatim quotes with the [m:ss] they were said
- Links that open the video at that second
With an AI assistant
Connect the MCP server to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, then paste:
Search inside the channel @hubermanlab for "caffeine". For the top 5 results, read the transcript and quote every passage about caffeine verbatim, with the [m:ss] timestamp and a link of the form https://youtu.be/ID?t=SECONDS. Do not paraphrase inside the quotes.
With the API
Set GYT_API_KEY to a key from the developers page. Each transcript or list page costs one credit; checking a channel's latest uploads is free.
1. Search one channel for a topic (1 credit per page)
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GYT_API_KEY" \ "https://getyoutubetranscript.com/api/v1/channel/search?channel=@hubermanlab&q=caffeine"2. Read the matches with timestamps
curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $GYT_API_KEY" \ "https://getyoutubetranscript.com/api/v1/transcript?v=VIDEO_ID×tamps=true"
Limits to know
- Quotes come from captions; for publication, confirm the wording against the video.
Tools for this workflow
Questions
Can I search a person across many channels?
Use YouTube search first (the search endpoint or tool) to find their appearances, then read those transcripts the same way.
More workflows
EducationYouTube playlist → study notesA 20-lecture course is ten hours of video and about an hour of reading. Get the reading.EducationLectures → flashcards & quizzesTesting yourself beats rewatching. Build the questions from the transcript.MarketingCompetitor channels → weekly briefKnow what three competitors published this week without watching any of it.DevelopersPlaylist → RAG corpusIndex what a channel said, chunked on caption timings, with links that open at the right second.ContentYouTube video → blog postA post built from what was said, not a generic article on the same topic.ContentOne video → a week of postsThe best hooks are lines someone already said out loud.