James BriggsA Pointman extension for agents that publish YouTube videos. Its behaviour covers the research, titles, description, chapters, tags and thumbnails for an upload, made in a thread and picked by the channel's owner. Its process uploads the video and changes a video's details on the channel through the YouTube Data API v3, only once the owner has said yes. It works for any channel: the owner's brand, links and taste are collected once and kept in the channel's own folder.
| File | What | When the agent reads it |
|---|---|---|
SKILL.md |
The workflow: research, drafts, phone check, the owner picks; the channel commands | Every wake (kept short) |
references/packaging.md |
Titles, description, chapters, tags, pinned comment, social posts | When it's writing those |
references/thumbnails.md |
Research, faces and cutouts, layout, rendering, the feed check, A/B tests | When it's making thumbnails |
scripts/thumbs.py |
Channel research, HTML to PNG renders, the feed-size check | Run with uv run
|
evals/ |
Tasks that measure it, run with and without the behaviour | When measuring it |
proto/youtube/v1/youtube.proto |
The commands' params and results, and the settings | When changing a command |
pointman add jamescalam/pointman-youtube
Every agent on the node gets SKILL.md in its prompt from its next wake. The commands run on the
machines it's installed on. The behaviour alone is also an ordinary skill: copy SKILL.md,
references/ and scripts/ to ~/.claude/skills/youtube/.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
youtube.videos {page_size?, page?} |
The channel's videos, newest first: id, title, privacy, publish time, views |
youtube.video {video} |
One video's title, description, tags, category, privacy and schedule |
youtube.upload {file, title, description, tags, category, privacy, publish_at?, made_for_kids?, thumbnail?, playlist?, confirm} |
A resumable upload, with progress; private unless said. Refused without confirm: true
|
youtube.update {video, title?, description?, tags?, category?, privacy?, publish_at?, made_for_kids?, confirm?} |
Changes only the fields given. A public video, or making one public or scheduling it, needs confirm: true
|
youtube.thumbnail {video, file, confirm?} |
Sets a JPEG or PNG thumbnail (at most 2 MB). A public video's needs confirm: true
|
/youtube add, /youtube client
|
Open the forms for a channel's sign-in, and for your own OAuth client (optional), in the app |
Uploads resume. A video goes up in chunks (chunk_mib, 8 MiB by default). After a dropped
connection the extension asks YouTube how much it has and carries on from there. The upload session is
the job's checkpoint, so a node that restarts mid-upload carries on too.
A change keeps the rest. YouTube's videos.update replaces every field of each part it's sent, so
a change sent with only a title would clear the description and tags. The extension reads the video
first, changes only the fields asked for, and sends back only the parts with a change in them.
In the Pointman app: /youtube add and tap Sign in. Enter the code at google.com/device, signed in
as the Google account that owns the channel. The refresh token is sealed in the vault as
youtube.<label>.
The sign-in goes through the Google OAuth client the release is built with, so there's nothing to set up in Google Cloud, and its quota is shared by everyone using it. Google shows its "unverified app" screen before the consent screen until the app is verified.
Your own Google OAuth client (optional). To use a Google Cloud project of your own and its quota:
- In Google Cloud console: turn on the YouTube Data API v3, set up the OAuth consent screen (External), and add yourself as a user. Publish the app to production once it works. While it's in testing, Google's refresh tokens last 7 days, so the channel would need signing in again every week.
- APIs & Services › Credentials › Create OAuth client ID › TVs and Limited Input devices.
- In the Pointman app:
/youtube client, and paste the client ID, a space, then the client secret. It's sealed in the vault asyoutube.client, and sign-ins go through it from then on. A channel signed in through one client is signed in again (/youtube add) after a switch to another.
Building it. A release is built with the repo's YOUTUBE_DEFAULT_CLIENT Actions secret (the client
ID, a space, then its secret). A build without it has no default, and asks for /youtube client.
Settings, per machine: account (which sign-in to use, by label; the first if empty) and chunk_mib.
Uploads have their own daily quota (videos.insert);
reads cost from the project's general YouTube quota.
cargo test
The tests run the extension under the SDK's stand-in node against a fake YouTube on a local port
(tests/common): an upload whose connection drops partway, an upload resumed from its checkpoint,
changes that keep every other field, refusals without confirm, the device-flow sign-in, and a token
that has run out. No real channel is called.
extension.toml's params and settings schemas are written from proto/youtube/v1/youtube.proto by the
SDK's pointman-extension manifest write: change the proto, then write them again. tests/manifest.rs
checks they match it field for field. A release is a tag that's the manifest's
version (git tag v0.3.0 && git push origin v0.3.0): .github/workflows/release.yml builds the four
platforms and attaches them to the release.
For the behaviour's scripts: uv, yt-dlp, ffmpeg and ImageMagick on the machine. Thumbnails
render with Playwright's Chromium (uv run --with playwright playwright install chromium), or with the
Open Design extension where the node has it.
YouTube's own help pages for the limits and rules (A/B tests, chapters, hashtags, tags); the Data API's video properties, resumable uploads and device sign-in. The rest is cited where it's used.
MIT licence.