Ask Claude About the YouTube Videos You Saved

Claude can't watch your YouTube library. It can't open your playlists either, and its built-in memory holds facts about you, not the forty talks you saved last spring. If you want to ask Claude "what did those videos say about pricing?", the videos have to live somewhere Claude can search. This post is the setup, with the limits stated up front. The same connector works in Cursor and other MCP clients; I use Claude here because it is the one I have tested end to end.

I build BrainTube, so read this as labelled. It started with my own YouTube Watch Later list, which had become a graveyard of hundreds of videos I meant to learn from. BrainTube is the system I built so that what I watch has somewhere to land.

Why summaries are the wrong starting point

YouTube already summarises videos with its own Ask and Gemini features, and so do most tools in this space. A summary helps you decide whether to watch. It does little for the question you have three months later, across twenty videos, when you can't remember which creator said what.

What helps then is a library: each video transcribed and indexed, searchable by meaning, and reachable from the assistant you already talk to. So the goal here is to keep the videos, connect them, and let your AI use them.

Step one: get the videos into a library

There are three ways in, and you can mix them.

Connect your YouTube account to import and keep syncing your playlists and Liked videos. Pick the playlists you built for learning. When you add a video to a synced playlist later, it turns up in the library without another save.

Paste a link or use the Chrome extension for one-off videos you find outside your playlists.

Follow a channel when you want a creator's new uploads without saving each one by hand. Follow YouTube channels and RSS, Atom or podcast feeds, and new uploads and posts are added to your library automatically.

One limit matters here. BrainTube can't read your watch history or your Watch Later list: the YouTube permission it asks for (youtube.readonly) doesn't expose either one. If your learning pile lives in Watch Later, move the videos you care about into a playlist and sync that.

Bulk YouTube import is capped per import, not by library size: 10 videos at a time on Free, 50 on Starter, 150 on Pro, and at most 3 bulk imports an hour. On Free a long playlist simply takes a few passes.

Saving costs nothing. Saving, transcripts and automatic summaries are free and unlimited on every plan, including saves made by an AI over MCP. Chat with your library is free up to a daily allowance (50 chats a day on Free) and MCP searches up to a monthly one (1,000 a month on Free); past those, and for AI actions such as quizzes and deep research, you spend credits.

Step two: connect BrainTube to Claude

BrainTube runs a remote MCP server at https://mcp.brain-tube.com/mcp; in Claude.ai you add it as a custom connector and sign in with OAuth, with no API key to paste.

That's it on the Claude side. MCP access and bt_ API keys are included on every BrainTube plan, including Free; none of the 38 tools has a paid gate. The connect page lists them with their descriptions.

This is tested with Claude. Other clients that speak MCP over streamable HTTP point at the same endpoint, but they haven't each been checked by hand, so treat them as likely, not confirmed. ChatGPT support is coming; it isn't available yet.

Step three: ask across the videos

Once the connector is on, ask Claude the questions you would ask a colleague who had watched the same videos. A few that work well:

• "Across my saved videos on negotiation, where do the speakers disagree?"
• "Which of my saved talks mention pricing experiments, and what did each one try?"
• "Summarise what I've saved about sleep and memory, and tell me which video each point comes from."

Behind the scenes Claude calls BrainTube's search tools. Search is hybrid (semantic plus keyword, fused by reciprocal rank), so a question phrased in your words still finds a passage phrased in the speaker's words. For questions that cut across topics, deep search follows the knowledge graph from the top results (multi-hop): BrainTube extracts entities from everything you save and links them into a knowledge graph automatically.

Claude can also save what it finds. In the same MCP session it can search your library and also save content, add notes and tag items, so a good answer or a new source can go straight back into the library for next time.

Where the timestamps show up

This is the part I want to be precise about. In BrainTube's own chat, answers cite your saved sources, and a video citation shows the timestamp of the moment it came from. That is the place to go when you need to rewatch the exact ninety seconds.

Inside Claude, the answers come from your saved videos too, but I have confirmed timestamp citations in BrainTube's chat, not in the MCP search results Claude sees. So the workflow I recommend is simple: ask Claude about the videos you saved, and open BrainTube's chat when you need the exact moment.

What this doesn't do

A few things to know before you set it up:

• It knows what you saved and nothing else. It doesn't know your watch history, and it doesn't watch YouTube on your behalf.
• Claude's own memory and this library are different things. Claude remembers who you are; the library remembers the sources you kept.
• There is no native mobile app yet. BrainTube runs in the browser at app.brain-tube.com as an installable web app (PWA), plus the Chrome extension.
• Credits apply to AI actions. Searching from Claude is free up to your plan's monthly allowance (1,000 searches on Free), then costs 1 credit per search.

FAQ

Can Claude watch YouTube videos?

Not by itself. Claude can search videos you have saved into a library it can reach over MCP. BrainTube transcribes and indexes each saved video so Claude can search it.

Can BrainTube import my Watch Later list?

No. The YouTube permission BrainTube uses can't see Watch Later or watch history. Move the videos into a playlist and sync that playlist instead.

Do I need an API key to connect BrainTube to Claude?

No. In Claude.ai you add BrainTube as a custom connector and sign in with OAuth.

Does this work on the free plan?

Yes. MCP access is included on every plan, including Free. Saving is free; searching from Claude is free up to your monthly allowance, then spends credits.