YouTube Playlist

Browse playlists and fetch transcripts via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow the instructions there to get and store the key.

Required Headers

Every request needs two headers:

• Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
• User-Agent: your agent's name and version if known (e.g. HermesAgent/0.11.0, ClaudeCode/1.0). Version is optional — agent name alone is fine. Do not omit this header or send a bare default — Cloudflare will return a 403 (error code 1010) and block the request.

API Reference

Full OpenAPI spec: transcriptapi.com/openapi.json — consult this for the latest parameters and schemas.

GET /api/v2/youtube/playlist/videos — 1 credit/page

Paginated playlist video listing (100 per page). Accepts playlist — a YouTube playlist URL or playlist ID.

# First page
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/playlist/videos?playlist=PL_PLAYLIST_ID
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

# Next pages
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/playlist/videos?continuation=TOKEN
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

Provide exactly one of playlist or continuation, not both.

Accepted playlist ID prefixes:

• PL — user-created playlists
• UU — channel uploads playlist
• LL — liked videos
• FL — favorites
• OL — other system playlists

Response:

{
  "results": [
    {
      "videoId": "abc123xyz00",
      "title": "Playlist Video Title",
      "channelId": "UCuAXFkgsw1L7xaCfnd5JJOw",
      "channelTitle": "Channel Name",
      "channelHandle": "@handle",
      "lengthText": "10:05",
      "viewCountText": "1.5M views",
      "thumbnails": [{ "url": "...", "width": 120, "height": 90 }],
      "index": "0"
    }
  ],
  "playlist_info": {
    "title": "Best Science Talks",
    "numVideos": "47",
    "description": "Top science presentations",
    "ownerName": "TED",
    "viewCount": "5000000"
  },
  "continuation_token": "4qmFsgKlARIYVVV1...",
  "has_more": true
}

Pagination flow:

1. First request: ?playlist=PLxxx — returns first 100 videos + continuation_token
2. Next request: ?continuation=TOKEN — returns next 100 + new token
3. Repeat until has_more: false or continuation_token: null

Workflow: Playlist → Transcripts

# 1. List playlist videos
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/playlist/videos?playlist=PL_PLAYLIST_ID
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

# 2. Get transcript from a video in the playlist
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript?video_url=VIDEO_ID&format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

Don't know a playlist ID? Find it from the channel

To browse a channel's playlists first (1 credit/page), then list videos in one of them:

# 1. List the channel's playlists
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/channel/playlists?channel=@TED
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

# 2. List videos in the chosen playlist (playlistId from step 1)
GET https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/playlist/videos?playlist=PLAYLIST_ID
Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0

Extract playlist ID from URL

From https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeiKm4sgNOknGvNjby9efdf, the playlist ID is PLrAXtmErZgOeiKm4sgNOknGvNjby9efdf. You can also pass the full URL directly to the playlist parameter.

Errors

1 credit per page. Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.

Copy-paste examples

Every request in this file as a ready-to-run one-liner: references/curl-examples.md