Integration guide
Use YouTube transcripts in Codex
Point Codex at one remote MCP server and it can read any YouTube video, channel, or playlist as text.
Option 1 — MCP server
Recent Codex CLI versions support remote (streamable HTTP) MCP servers. Add this to ~/.codex/config.toml:
[mcp_servers.bulktranscripts]
url = "https://bulktranscripts.co/mcp"Codex's connector settings don't send custom headers on every setup, so for paid credits use the key-in-URL form instead — it behaves identically:
[mcp_servers.bulktranscripts]
url = "https://bulktranscripts.co/mcp?key=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY"Option 2 — agent skill
Codex reads Agent Skills (SKILL.md folders) too:
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills/youtube-transcripts
curl -fsSL https://bulktranscripts.co/skill.md \
-o ~/.codex/skills/youtube-transcripts/SKILL.mdThe skill teaches Codex the plain REST API, so it works even on Codex builds without remote-MCP support — it just needs curl.
Try asking
- Summarize this video and pull the key quotes: https://youtube.com/watch?v=…
- What has @TED published about AI? Fetch the three most relevant transcripts.
- Check if @mkbhd uploaded anything this week and brief me on it.
- Get every transcript in this course playlist and turn it into study notes.
Notes
The connection works immediately on the free tier — no account, no OAuth. Buying a one-time credit pack gets you a license key that doubles as the API key; credits never expire and cached transcripts are always free.
On older Codex versions, verify MCP support with codex mcp --help; if your build only supports stdio servers, use the skill instead.