What you can ask once it is connected
You are not learning a query language. You describe what you want to know, and your agent pulls your actual numbers to answer it.
- Where do people stop watching my last five videos, and what do those moments have in common?
- Which search terms bring viewers to my channel that my titles do not mention?
- Compare my browse traffic before and after I changed my thumbnails.
- Read my last 200 comments and tell me the three questions I have not answered.
- Draft five titles for this idea in my channel's voice, and score them.
- What has my competitor broken out on that I have never covered?
Everything the connector can do
34 tools, grouped by the permission you grant. You choose which of the eight the agent gets, one at a time, on the approval screen.
- Your channel
- Your channel and its stats, your uploads newest first, everything held about one video, comments on your videos with no author names stored, a channel profile that says which parts you told us and which were inferred, and your launch history with how each one performed against its prediction.
- Your analytics
- Summary and monthly views and watch time, the exact search phrases people typed over 90 days, the retention curve for a video point by point, thumbnail impressions and click-through rate, audience by subscriber status, country, device and operating system, which suggested video or site sent the traffic, end-card clicks, and per-playlist views and watch time.
- Drafting and scoring
- Title variants in your channel's voice, a description for a title, a rendered thumbnail returned as an image, a re-crop of one you already made, and a score for a title, description or thumbnail before you commit.
- Looking anything up
- Any channel by id, @handle or URL, any video, any channel's recent uploads, and comments on any public video. Each reply tells you what it cost and what you have left.
- Competitors
- The channels you track, a tracked channel's uploads with breakouts marked, what competitors broke out on that you have never covered, and what is rising in your niche. Changing the list is a permission of its own.
- Your plan
- The ideas you accepted, with their research and scripts — and, only if you grant it separately, adding ideas and research and writing into those scripts.
How it works
Add the connector to your agent
Paste https://mcp.vidtraffic.com into your client's connector settings — in Claude, that is where custom connectors are added. There is no API key to generate and nothing to install: the address itself identifies the server.
Choose what it may see
You land on a page showing your channel and eight permissions, each one a separate choice. Grant as few as you like — the tools behind one you leave off politely refuse rather than failing, so if you want your agent to look up other people's videos, tick that one.
Ask
Your agent now has your channel. Ask in plain language, in whatever client you already work in.
Disconnect whenever you like
One click revokes access. It stops on the agent's very next request, not at some later expiry.
What you get
- Your real analytics — retention, watch time, traffic sources, search terms, audience breakdowns, end cards, playlists
- Impressions and CTR — from YouTube's daily reach report; the first numbers arrive about two days after you connect
- Your audience's words — comments your agent can read and group, with author names and channel ids never stored
- Drafting and scoring, within your plan's allowance
- Public lookups — any channel or video by id, handle or URL, from a daily allowance every reply reports on
- It never writes to YouTube — no posting, editing or deleting; the only things it can change are your competitor list and your plan, each behind its own permission
- No key management — no YouTube Data API key, no Google Cloud, no token to rotate
- Any MCP client with OAuth — Claude and Claude Code today; the address is the same everywhere
- Revocable in one click — access ends on the next request
Why this is different from other YouTube MCP servers
Search for a YouTube MCP server and you will mostly find community repos that read public data. Useful — but retention, traffic sources and search terms are owner-only, and a public API key can never reach them.
| Public-data MCP servers | Self-hosted analytics servers | VidTraffic | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own retention and traffic sources | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Google Cloud project needed | — | ✓ | ✕ |
| API key or refresh token to manage | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ |
| Runs on your machine | ✓ | ✓ | no — hosted |
| Drafts and scores titles and thumbnails | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Time to first answer | minutes | an afternoon | about a minute |
Built for the channel you are actually growing
Most analytics tools hand you a dashboard and leave the thinking to you. This does the opposite: it puts your numbers where your AI agent can reason over them, so the output is a decision — what to title, what to cut, what to make next — not another chart.
If you are already using an AI assistant to plan videos, this is the piece that stops it guessing about your channel.
Frequently asked questions
What is a YouTube MCP server?
A connector that lets an AI agent reach YouTube data through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for connecting AI apps to outside tools. Ours connects your agent to your own channel's analytics and audience data, and to the drafting tools alongside them.
What is the YouTube MCP server URL?
https://mcp.vidtraffic.com — paste it into your MCP client's connector settings and approve the connection.
Do I need a YouTube Data API key?
No. You sign in with Google and choose what to grant. There is no API key to create, no Google Cloud project to configure and no refresh token to store.
Can it change anything on my channel?
No. It never posts, edits or deletes anything on YouTube — not with any permission, not ever. The only things it can change are inside VidTraffic: the competitors you track, and your plan — adding ideas and research, and writing into your scripts. Each of those is its own permission, granted separately.
What data can it see?
Whatever you tick, and nothing else: your channel and videos, your analytics, your comments, public information about channels you name, your plan, and your competitor list. Only the channel you approve, and only while you leave access on.
Which AI clients does it work with?
Any client that supports MCP with OAuth. Claude and Claude Code today. The address is the same everywhere.
Are there limits?
Drafting comes out of your plan's allowance. Public lookups draw on a daily allowance of YouTube quota rather than a fixed number of calls, because a channel lookup and a niche scan cost very different amounts — every reply tells you what you have left.
Why is there no click-through rate yet?
Impressions and CTR come from YouTube's daily reach report rather than the live API. We request it when you connect, and YouTube takes about two days to generate the first one.
What is the best MCP server for YouTube?
It depends what you need. For public data — transcripts, search, metadata — a community server will do. For your own retention, traffic sources and search terms without building an OAuth setup yourself, that is what this one is for.
How much does it cost?
There is a free plan, with no card.