# Give Claude a YouTube video

Claude cannot watch a video, but it reads transcripts well. vid2context hands it the transcript of any YouTube video with timestamps, plus the title, channel and chapters, so Claude can summarize, answer questions and cite the moment each answer comes from.

There are two ways: let Claude fetch videos itself through MCP (Claude Code and Claude Desktop), or upload a file to a Claude Project.

## Claude Code

These steps use the published npm package `vid2context-mcp`.

1. Add the server for your user, so it is available in every project:

   ```sh
   claude mcp add --scope user --transport stdio vid2context -- npx -y vid2context-mcp
   ```

2. With an optional key (another option has to sit between `--env` and the name):

   ```sh
   claude mcp add --env GROQ_API_KEY=your-key --scope user --transport stdio vid2context -- npx -y vid2context-mcp
   ```

Then ask:

> Get the transcript of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw and tell me what he says about the elephants, with timestamps.

## Claude Desktop

Claude Desktop reads servers from `claude_desktop_config.json`. The full steps, including where the file lives on macOS and Windows, are on the [Claude Desktop page](https://vid2context.com/docs/clients/claude-desktop.md). After a restart, the tools menu in a new chat lists vid2context.

## What Claude receives

When Claude calls `get_transcript`, this is the text it gets back for "Me at the zoo", rendered by vid2context from a recorded run:

```text
Title: Me at the zoo
Channel: jawed
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
Duration: 0:19
Transcript: creator-captions, en (youtube-captions)
Chapters: 0:00 Intro | 0:05 The cool thing | 0:17 End

[0:01] All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants
[0:05] the cool thing about these guys is that they have really...
[0:07] really really long trunks
[0:12] and that's cool
[0:14] (baaaaaaaaaaahhh!!)
[0:16] and that's pretty much all there is to say
```

## A Claude Project, without MCP

To give Claude a video in the web app, upload a context pack: one Markdown file with the header, the chapters and the timed transcript, written for a model to read and cite. These commands use the published CLI through `npx`, so you only need Node.js 22 or newer.

```sh
npx -y vid2context pack "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw" > context.md
```

Add `context.md` to the Project's files. This is that file for "Me at the zoo":

```markdown
# Video context pack

This document holds the transcripts and metadata of one video (0:19 in total), prepared by vid2context for an AI model to read. Each transcript paragraph starts with the time it begins in the video, in brackets; linked times open the video at that moment.

Citation rule: when you use something from a video, cite it as [Title @ m:ss](https://github.com/nirholas/vid2context/blob/main/link), using the time and link of the paragraph you drew on (or [Title @ m:ss] when the video has no link).

## Me at the zoo

- Channel: [jawed](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4QobU6STFB0P71PMvOGN5A)
- Duration: 0:19
- Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw
- Language: en
- Transcript: creator captions from youtube-captions

### Description

> Microplastics are accumulating in human brains at an alarming rate
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PT5c1z3LL8
>
> “Nanoplastics and Human Health” with Matthew J Campen, PhD, MSPH
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRBN_4L09Mg
>
> 00:00 Intro
> 00:05 The cool thing
> 00:17 End

### Chapters

- [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw&t=0s) Intro
- [0:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw&t=5s) The cool thing
- [0:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw&t=17s) End

### Transcript

#### Intro (0:00)

[0:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw&t=1s) All right, so here we are, in front of the elephants

#### The cool thing (0:05)

[0:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw&t=5s) the cool thing about these guys is that they have really... really really long trunks and that's cool (baaaaaaaaaaahhh!!) and that's pretty much all there is to say
```

`pack` also takes several links or a whole playlist and fits them into a token budget with `--max-tokens`.

## Long videos

A transcript costs about 12,000 tokens per hour. For long videos Claude can call `get_outline` first and read only the chapters it needs with `get_section`, or receive the transcript in pages with `maxTokens`.