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MCPTutorialClaude

YouTube MCP Server for Claude, Cursor, and VS Code

Hussein Hakizimana··4 min read

If you're using Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any other MCP-compatible AI tool, you can give it full access to YouTube data in about two minutes. No code, no API calls to write. Just install the server and start asking questions.

This is what that looks like in practice:

"Get the transcript of this video and summarize the main points: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

"What are people saying in the top comments on this video?"

"Find the most viewed TypeScript tutorials uploaded this week."

"List all the videos on the @t3dotgg channel from the last month."

The agent figures out which tool to call, calls it, and works with the result. You don't write any glue code.

Install

You need Node.js and a Stophy API key from stophy.dev/dashboard.

Terminal
1env STOPHY_API_KEY=st_YOUR_API_KEY npx -y stophy-mcp

That's enough to confirm it works. For permanent setup, add it to your client config.

Claude Desktop

~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS, %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json on Windows:

json
1{
2  "mcpServers": {
3    "stophy": {
4      "command": "npx",
5      "args": ["-y", "stophy-mcp"],
6      "env": {
7        "STOPHY_API_KEY": "your_api_key_here"
8      }
9    }
10  }
11}

Restart Claude Desktop and the tools show up automatically.

Cursor

Open Cursor Settings, go to Features > MCP Servers, click "+ Add new global MCP server", and paste the same JSON block. Refresh the list and the tools are ready in the Composer Agent.

What you can do

Once the server is connected, you have six tools available:

Search YouTube. Ask the agent to find videos by topic, filter by upload date or duration, and sort by views or recency. Useful when you want to research what content exists on a subject before going deeper.

Find the top 5 videos about React Server Components uploaded this year

Read transcripts. Any public video with captions can be transcribed and read by the agent. The full text comes back with timestamps, so the agent can quote specific moments or summarize sections.

What does this video say about database indexing? https://youtube.com/watch?v=...

Pull comments. Get the top or most recent comments from any video, including reply threads. Good for sentiment research, understanding what an audience found confusing, or extracting feedback.

What are the most common criticisms in the comments on this video?

Browse channels. Get a channel's full video catalog, sorted by latest, most popular, or oldest. Or pull the about page for subscriber count, description, and links.

Show me all videos from @fireship sorted by view count

Fetch playlists. Get every video in a playlist with full metadata. Useful for processing course content or curated collections.

List everything in this playlist and tell me which videos are under 10 minutes

Check your balance. See how many credits you have left before running a large job.

One credit per call

Each tool call uses one credit from your Stophy balance. Checking your credit balance is free. New accounts start with 100 credits, enough to get a real sense of what the tools can do.

Full reference

The MCP documentation covers every parameter for each tool, response shapes, and setup instructions for VS Code and Windsurf. The GitHub repo has the full source.

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