youtube

YouTube Video Context

Fetch video information from YouTube using yt-dlp.

Instructions

When the user provides a YouTube URL (youtube.com or youtu.be), use yt-dlp to fetch video metadata:

# Get full JSON metadata
yt-dlp --skip-download --dump-json "VIDEO_URL"

This returns JSON with:

• title - Video title
• description - Full description (often contains recipes, timestamps, links)
• channel - Channel name (useful for source attribution)
• upload_date - Publication date

Quick commands

# Get just the description
yt-dlp --skip-download --print description "VIDEO_URL"

# Get title and description
yt-dlp --skip-download --print "%(title)s" --print description "VIDEO_URL"

Examples

User: "Create a recipe from https://youtube.com/watch?v=xyz"

1. Fetch the video metadata with yt-dlp
2. Extract the recipe from the description
3. Use the channel name for attribution

Backfilling New YouTube Channels

When adding a new YouTube channel to the cocktails app:

1. Create the channel directory structure:

   • src/data/recipes/youtube-channel/CHANNEL_SLUG/
   • src/data/recipes/youtube-channel/CHANNEL_SLUG/_source.json

2. Backfill videos to create GitHub issue with all available videos:

   yarn youtube-sync --channel CHANNEL_SLUG --days 365 --dry-run
   

3. Review the dry-run output to see what videos will be listed

4. Run without dry-run to create the issue:

   yarn youtube-sync --channel CHANNEL_SLUG --days 365
   

This creates a GitHub issue listing all videos from the channel that don't have recipes yet.

YouTube API Configuration

The sync tool supports two methods for fetching videos:

1. YouTube Data API v3 (Recommended) - Reliable, fast, and works in CI environments

   • Set YOUTUBE_API_KEY environment variable with your API key
   • Get a free API key from Google Cloud Console
   • 50 quota units/day = ~1,667 API calls (more than enough for this use case)
   • Add as GitHub secret: Repository Settings → Secrets → Actions → YOUTUBE_API_KEY

2. yt-dlp (Fallback) - Used automatically if API key not available

   • Works locally but may be blocked by YouTube in CI environments
   • No configuration needed, but less reliable in automated contexts

The tool automatically tries the API first (if key available), then falls back to yt-dlp if needed.

Channel Video Sync

A GitHub Action runs weekly to check all channels for new videos and creates an issue if any are found.

To manually trigger: Run the workflow dispatch for youtube-sync.yml in GitHub Actions.

Available Options

• --dry-run - Test without creating GitHub issues
• --days <number> - Number of days to look back for videos (default: 7)
• --channel <slug> - Only process a specific channel by slug
• --help - Show help message