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Workflow · Research

Channel archive → cited quotes

“He said it in some video” is not a citation. This workflow finds where, quotes it verbatim, and links the exact second.

Runs on the MCP server (one sign-in, 30 free credits) or the REST API · repeat reads from your library are free.

How it works

  1. Search inside the channel with search_channel for the topic.
  2. Fetch transcripts for the matching videos, with timestamps on.
  3. The assistant extracts verbatim quotes with their start times.
  4. Each citation renders as quote + video link + &t= timestamp — checkable by anyone.

Verifiable beats plausible

Timestamped segments turn a claim into a checkable reference: youtube.com/watch?v=ID&t=214s drops the reader at the moment the words were said. For journalism, academic work, or just winning an argument, that is the difference between a quote and a rumor.

Agent prompt — paste into Claude, ChatGPT, or any assistant connected to the BulkTranscripts MCP server:

Search @channel for everything about [TOPIC]. Read the top 3 matching
transcripts with timestamps and give me every direct statement they made
about it — verbatim quotes only, each with the video title and a link to
the exact timestamp. Note where statements from different videos conflict.

Or script it against the REST API:

# search inside one channel (1 credit)
curl "https://bulktranscripts.co/api/v1/channel/search?channel=@handle&q=TOPIC&limit=5"
# transcript with per-line timestamps (1 credit first time)
curl "https://bulktranscripts.co/api/v1/transcript?video=VIDEO_ID"

What you’ll need

An MCP-capable assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) connected to https://bulktranscripts.co/mcp — one sign-in includes 30 free credits — or a license key for the REST API. Transcripts already in your library are re-read free, so iterating on the same videos costs nothing after the first pass.

Common questions

How accurate are the timestamps?

They come from the video's own caption track — the same timing YouTube uses to display captions, accurate to the second.

Can I search across many channels at once?

Use search_youtube for a keyword sweep across all of YouTube, then search_channel to go deep on specific creators.

More workflows

Updated