YouTube Playlists MCP

A simple MCP server to manage YouTube playlist built in Typescript.

Setup

Credentials

1. Go to Google Cloud Console and create/select a project
2. Enable the YouTube Data API v3 (APIs & Services > Library)
3. Configure the OAuth consent screen (APIs & Services > OAuth consent screen)
   • In Data Access, add the youtube and youtube.force-ssl scopes
   • In Audience, add your Google account email as a test user
4. Create OAuth 2.0 credentials (APIs & Services > Credentials > Create Credentials > OAuth client ID)
   • Application type: Web app
   • Add http://localhost:3000/oauth2 as an authorized redirect URI
5. Download the JSON file and save it as credentials.json in the project root

Build

npm install
npm run build

Authenticate

Run the server once to sign in with your Google account.

node dist/index.js

Tokens are saved to tokens.json for future runs.

Configure Claude

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "youtube-playlists-mcp": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/youtube-playlists-mcp/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

Tools

Tool	Description
list_playlists	List all playlists with ID, title, and video count
get_playlist_videos	Get all videos in a playlist
add_video_to_playlist	Add video to playlist by video ID
move_video	Move video from one playlist to another
remove_video_from_playlist	Remove video from playlist

Notes

• Watch Later is not supported due to a YouTube API limitation
• The server authenticates on startup and automatically refreshes tokens when they expire
• If authentication doesn't work in Firefox, try a Chromium-based browser