youtube-obsidian

This MCP server, youtube-obsidian, automatically generates Obsidian notes from YouTube lectures by integrating YouTube subtitles, screenshot capture, and structured note generation via Claude AI. The server exposes three tools through Claude Desktop: process_youtube_lecture, get_video_subtitles, and configure_paths. Use process_youtube_lecture to process a video URL, specify timestamps for screenshots, and choose where to save the resulting Markdown notes and images. Use get_video_subtitles to preview or retrieve the full transcript before processing, which helps you identify key moments. Finally, configure_paths lets you set or update default Vault, notes folder, and images folder paths to tailor the Obsidian organization to your workflow.

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.10+ installed on your system
• FFmpeg installed and accessible in your system PATH
• Claude Desktop installed and configured
• Obsidian installed (optional but recommended)

Installation steps:

1. Clone or download this repository:

git clone <repository-url>
cd youtube-obsidian

2. Create a Python virtual environment and activate it (optional but recommended):

python -m venv venv
# Windows
venv\Scripts\activate
# macOS/Linux
source venv/bin/activate

3. Install required packages (adjust if a requirements.txt exists):

pip install -r requirements.txt

4. Start the MCP server:

python server.py

5. Ensure Claude Desktop is configured to connect to this MCP server and that the Claude Desktop configuration points to the correct server entry if required.

Tips and notes:

• The server relies on YouTube subtitles; not all videos have captions, so subtitles may be unavailable for some clips.
• FFmpeg must be accessible in your PATH for screenshot capture to work.
• If you run into connection issues with Claude Desktop, verify double-backslashes in any claude_desktop_config.json paths and restart Claude Desktop.
• You can customize the Obsidian vault, notes folder, and images folder via the configure_paths tool.
• Environment variable: PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1 helps keep logs in real-time when running through Claude Desktop or shells.