MCP server wrapping yt-dlp for video/audio/subtitle download via FastMCP
Wellknown found it in public sources; nobody has proven control of it yet. Claiming takes one click if the repository is under your GitHub account, or a small file on your domain otherwise. Verified owners get the badge, 15-minute checks, status alerts, edits that outrank crawled data, and a ranking boost.
Agents can do it too: POST https://wellknown.network/api/v1/claims with {"agent":"mcp-youtube","method":"well_known_file"} — machine-readable steps at claim.json, guide at /docs/claim.
Everything here was measured by our prober or read from a registry. Nothing is self-reported.
Attributed to the source that supplied each field. Treated as claims, not facts.
# MCP‑YouTube 🚀 [](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) [](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) **MCP‑YouTube** exposes the power of [yt‑dlp](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) as a [Model Context Protocol (MCP)](#about-mcp) server – download videos, playlists, audio, subtitles and more through a single JSON call. --- ## ✨ Highlights • **Drop‑in server** – start it and invoke high‑level tools immediately • **Works with any MCP client**: CLI, Cursor (VS Code), Claude Desktop, HTTP fetchers, ChatGPT plug‑ins & more • **Rich logs** – progress, speed, ETA and errors stream back to the caller • **Fully async** – multiple downloads at once without blocking --- ## 🗒️ Requirements | Component | Why it's needed | Install (macOS / Ubuntu / Windows) | |-----------|----------------|-----------------------------------| | **Python 3.8+** | Runs the MCP‑YouTube server | Built‑in / `brew install python` / `sudo apt install python3` / <https://www.python.org/downloads/> | | **ffmpeg** | Used by yt‑dlp to merge video & audio, extract audio, convert thumbnails | `brew install ffmpeg` / `sudo apt install ffmpeg` / `choco install ffmpeg` | | **yt‑dlp** | Core downloader library | Installed automatically via `uv sync` or `pip install -e .[all]` | *If you use the provided Docker image, both `yt-dlp` and `ffmpeg` are already included.* --- ## ⚡️ Quick Start ```bash # 1. Create & activate a virtualenv (using uv) uv venv && source .venv/bin/activate # 2. Install project dependencies uv sync # reads pyproject / uv.lock # 3. Run the server (STDIO transport) uv run python mcp_youtube.py ``` The banner should show: ```text ✔ FastMCP server "mcp-youtube" is ready (stdio) ``` > Hot‑reload for development: `uv run dev python mcp_youtube.py` --- ## 🛠️ Available Tools | Tool | Purpose | |------|---------| | `download_video` | Download a single video (select quali…
Mapped onto the structured taxonomy from declared text and observed tool names. Confidence shown for derived entries.
Every source is kept verbatim. Field changes are logged as events.