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The YouTube tool lets an agent search videos, fetch details, and pull transcripts.

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Overview

YouTube tool allows you to search videos, get video details, and extract transcripts.

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Installation

pip install "praisonai[tools]"

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Environment Variables

export YOUTUBE_API_KEY="${YOUTUBE_API_KEY:?Set YOUTUBE_API_KEY in your shell}"  # Optional for basic features

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Quick Start

1

Simple Usage

from praisonai_tools import YouTubeTool

# Initialize
youtube = YouTubeTool()

# Search
results = youtube.search("Python tutorials")
print(results)
2

With Configuration

Use the same tool with an agent — see Usage with Agent below, or pass env vars and options from the sections above.

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How It Works

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Usage with Agent

from praisonaiagents import Agent
from praisonai_tools import YouTubeTool

agent = Agent(
    name="VideoResearcher",
    instructions="You help find and summarize YouTube videos.",
    tools=[YouTubeTool()]
)

response = agent.chat("Find videos about machine learning basics")
print(response)

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Available Methods

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search(query, max_results=5)

Search YouTube videos. 
from praisonai_tools import YouTubeTool

youtube = YouTubeTool()
videos = youtube.search("AI tutorials", max_results=5)

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get_video(video_id)

Get video details. 
video = youtube.get_video("dQw4w9WgXcQ")

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get_transcript(video_id)

Get video transcript. 
transcript = youtube.get_transcript("dQw4w9WgXcQ")

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Common Errors

ErrorCauseSolution
youtube-transcript-api not installedMissing dependencyRun pip install youtube-transcript-api
Transcript not availableNo captionsTry different video
Rate limitedToo many requestsAdd delays

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Best Practices

Basic transcript features work without a key, but video search needs YOUTUBE_API_KEY. Set it in your shell or .env.
search(query, max_results=5) defaults to 5. Keep it low so the agent processes fewer videos per query.
Not every video has captions. Wrap get_transcript(video_id) in try/except so the agent can skip or report videos without transcripts.

Spotify

Music search

Wikipedia

Knowledge base