YouTube Search Tool - Public Video Discovery API for Agents

Search public YouTube videos through Vernclaw and AIAPI Center, returning compact JSON rows with titles, URLs, channels, duration, and public metrics for agent workflows.

What is YouTube Search Tool?

YouTube Search helps agents find public videos for launch research, creator monitoring, tutorial discovery, and market scans. The connector routes through AIAPI Center and the official YouTube Data API, then normalizes each video row for downstream automation.

Setup

For Vernclaw users, enable the connector in Connector Settings, then authenticate the CLI with your Vernclaw API key:

vernclaw-cli status
vernclaw-cli login --api-key YOUR_VERNCLAW_API_KEY

For Vernclaw or AIAPI Center operators, the upstream YouTube provider also needs a Google YouTube Data API key. Create or select a Google Cloud project, enable YouTube Data API v3, then open APIs & Services > Credentials > Create credentials > API key. Restrict the key to YouTube Data API v3 before production use, then configure AIAPI Center's youtube provider with that key.

Parameters

query (required): search query
limit (optional): number of videos to return, up to 50
order (optional): date, rating, relevance, title, or viewCount
region_code (optional): two-letter region code such as US
relevance_language (optional): language hint such as en
published_after / published_before (optional): ISO 8601 timestamps with timezone

Example

vernclaw-cli invoke search.youtube --query "AI agent workflows" --limit 5 --order date --region-code US

Output

The CLI returns compact JSON by default:

{"status":200,"data":{}}

The data payload includes a normalized summary plus items rows with:

video ID and canonical YouTube URL
title, description, channel, and publish time
ISO 8601 duration
public metrics when available
default output omits provider/source metadata and raw payloads

Use --pretty only for human-readable inspection. For automation, parse the JSON envelope and numeric status.

Limits

Only public videos returned by the official YouTube Data API are available. Transcript text, comments, and private/unlisted access are not included in this version.

Troubleshooting

No API key configured for provider: youtube: Vernclaw can reach AIAPI Center, but AIAPI Center does not yet have the upstream YouTube provider key configured.
model_not_supported with provider youtube: check that AIAPI Center has the youtube provider enabled and mapped to a YouTube Data API v3 key.
Empty results: confirm the query, region, language, and publication window. The connector only returns public videos available through the official YouTube Data API.