Upload to YouTube from Claude Code
Claude Code can upload Shorts and videos on YouTube through ClipSpeed. Add the ClipSpeed server with one command, sign in, and then ask Claude Code to upload Shorts and videos, pick the time, and apply YouTube's settings, without leaving the terminal, VS Code and JetBrains.
Keep a human in the loop: Claude Code shows the plan and asks before anything is public. Posting today: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.
Also try
How to upload YouTube from Claude Code
One terminal command registers the server. Start a session, run /mcp to sign in to ClipSpeed in the browser tab that opens, and every tool is available. Connect YouTube in ClipSpeed, then describe the post. Setup takes about a minute.
# One-time setup (OAuth, no API key)
claude mcp add --transport http clipspeed https://api.clipspeed.ai/mcp
# Then ask Claude Code:
> Upload clip 3 as a Short now, title it from the hook, keep it public
Claude Code: Preview — nothing booked yet. YouTube — privacy_status: public. Book it?Servers load at session start. If the tools do not appear, run claude mcp list, then start a new session.
- Run claude mcp add --transport http clipspeed https://api.clipspeed.ai/mcp in your terminal.
- Start claude and run /mcp. Pick clipspeed and authenticate; a browser tab opens for the ClipSpeed sign-in. Approve it.
- Ask it to list your channels. Claude Code calls list_channels and shows what is connected.
- Connect YouTube in the ClipSpeed app, or ask Claude Code for a connect link: it is private, valid for ten minutes, and YouTube signs you in itself.
Developer reference: the Claude Code MCP page.
What can Claude Code do on YouTube?
On YouTube, Claude Code can upload Shorts and full videos with a title, description, hashtags and a privacy setting. Every booking runs through the same rules as the ClipSpeed app.
Video posts
YouTube takes video through ClipSpeed. Video: MP4, MOV or WebM up to 1 GB by public link, or a finished ClipSpeed clip by clip_id.
5,000 characters, checked at booking
YouTube's own arithmetic. Too long is refused with the real count, never trimmed at send time. Titles are required and cap at 100.
Exact time or refused
Name the minute and Claude Code books it, or you are told why not and offered the next open slot. A booked YouTube post is never moved behind your back.
Preview before anything posts
preview: true runs the whole booking and writes nothing. Claude Code shows the plan, with each slot and the day's remaining cap, and books only on your yes.
Clips cut in the same session
Submit a video or stream link, get captioned 9:16 clips with a viral score, and post the best as native video on YouTube. No download, no re-upload.
Pacing and numbers
Video on YouTube is at least 4 hours apart, up to 4 a day under your plan. After a post goes out, Claude Code can read back views and engagement where YouTube provides them.
How does Claude Code post to YouTube through ClipSpeed?
You describe what you want in plain language and Claude Code makes the ClipSpeed calls. A typical conversation has three beats.
Find your YouTube channel
Ask Claude Code whether YouTube is connected. It calls list_channels and reads platform_settings, so it also knows what YouTube accepts and the limits before you write a word.
Compose within the rules
Describe the post. Claude Code drafts within YouTube's limits; mention a clip or a file and it attaches it.
Schedule or publish
Name a time, or say now. The slot is booked exactly or refused with the next open one, and the reply carries the id you can cancel or edit by.
YouTube settings reference
These are the schedule_post fields that apply to YouTube. Mention any of them in plain language and Claude Code sets them; the server checks them at booking.
| Field | Type | Required | What it does on YouTube |
|---|---|---|---|
platforms | string[] | Yes | Include "youtube". Up to ten platforms per call; each books its own slot. |
title | string | Yes | The video title. YouTube requires one; up to 100 characters. |
text | string | No | The description, up to 5,000 characters. Links stay clickable. |
hashtags | string[] | No | Appended to the description; the first three show above the title on YouTube. They count toward the 5,000. |
privacy_status | public | unlisted | private | No | Defaults to public. Ask for unlisted when you want to review the upload on YouTube before anyone sees it. |
clip_id or media_url | string | One of the two | A finished ClipSpeed clip from check_clips, or a public https link to an MP4, MOV or WebM up to 1 GB. |
scheduled_at | ISO 8601 | No | Booked exactly or refused with the next open slot. Omit it to upload as soon as a slot is free. |
preview | boolean | No | true books nothing and returns the exact slot each upload would get. |
Common YouTube configurations
Ask Claude Code for any of these and it applies the matching settings.
Short, public, as soon as possible
Unlisted for review first
Scheduled premiere-style drop
Dry run of a week of Shorts
Example prompts for YouTube in Claude Code
Type these into the terminal, VS Code and JetBrains, or pass one to release.sh in a script. Claude Code calls ClipSpeed and confirms before publishing.
Upload YouTube with a scheduled time
Upload clip 3 as a Short now, title it from the hook, keep it public. Keep the text under 5,000 characters. Preview first.
Cut the clips, then post the best
Clip this link, keep the top three by viral score, and schedule them to YouTube at 11am, 3pm and 7pm tomorrow with titles written from each hook. Show me the plan before booking.
From a script with Claude Code
claude -p "Summarise the changes since the last git tag as one YouTube post under 5,000 characters with a title. Schedule it via ClipSpeed for today at 10am; preview first and book if nothing is refused."
YouTube limits and gotchas to know
YouTube enforces a few rules that Claude Code and ClipSpeed respect automatically, but knowing them helps you phrase requests.
- A title is required and capped at 100 characters. Ask the agent to write the title from the clip's hook line; the booking is refused, not trimmed, if it runs long.
- YouTube takes video only. A text-only or image request to YouTube is refused at booking with the message "YouTube takes video posts, not text".
- privacy_status defaults to public. Say "unlisted" or "private" in the prompt when you want to check the upload on YouTube first.
- Uploads are spaced four hours apart on the same channel and capped at your plan's daily number. A second upload inside that window is refused with the next open slot, never silently moved.
- Shorts are detected by YouTube from a vertical 9:16 frame under three minutes. ClipSpeed clips already come out 9:16; a 16:9 source uploads as a standard video.
| Rule | YouTube |
|---|---|
| Accepts | Video |
| Text limit | 5,000 characters |
| Title | 100 characters, required |
| Links in the caption | Kept |
| Pacing | Video on YouTube is at least 4 hours apart, up to 4 a day under your plan. |
| Formats | Video: MP4, MOV or WebM up to 1 GB by public link, or a finished ClipSpeed clip by clip_id. Aspect: 9:16 vertical for Shorts, 16:9 for standard uploads |
| Status | Posting today |
What Postiz-style schedulers cannot do
Cut the clips first
Claude Code does not need finished video to start. Hand it a YouTube link, a podcast, a stream VOD or a local export. ClipSpeed finds the moments, cuts them to 9:16 with word-by-word captions, scores each one 0 to 100 for shareability, and returns them in the same conversation. Claude Code picks by score, writes the caption from the transcript, and books the clips on YouTube. Three tool calls, one approval, no download and no re-upload.
- Clips arrive with a title written from the hook, a transcript and a viral score, so the agent can choose and caption without watching the footage.
- Live streams can be clipped while they are still on air; the agent books the highlights for the next morning before the stream ends.
- Every clip is already hosted, so
schedule_posttakes its id directly. Nothing moves through your laptop.
submit_to_clipspeedPaste the link. ClipSpeed starts the job and returns a project id.check_clipsPoll with the project id. Back come the finished 9:16 clips with titles, transcripts, viral scores and preview links.schedule_postPass the clip id, the platforms, a caption and a time. Claude Code shows the plan with preview: true, you say yes, it books.generate_image or generate_videoDescribe the shot. ClipSpeed runs it on the model that fits (Seedance, Kling, Veo, Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image and others) and quotes the credits first.wait_for_generationReturns the hosted result link and a preview the agent can show you.schedule_post with media_urlThe result link goes straight into the booking on YouTube. The caption, the time and the file are approved together.The other half nobody else has
Generate the video, then post it
A product shot for Instagram, a 16:9 announcement graphic for X, a six-second opener before a clip: Claude Code can make a short video with ClipSpeed's image and video models and book the result in the same reply. There is no separate design tool, no export, no upload page. The generated file is hosted, so media_url is the only thing the booking needs.
- The price in credits is quoted before anything renders, within the per-generation and daily caps you set in Settings.
- Results are previewed in the conversation, so you approve the picture and the post at once.
- video posts as MP4, MOV or WebM up to 1 GB.
What is Claude Code?
Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool. It runs in your terminal, with extensions for VS Code and JetBrains, reads your codebase, runs commands and calls MCP tools to finish multi-step work. With ClipSpeed registered as an MCP server, it can also clip a video, generate images and video, and schedule posts to your connected platforms from the same session, or from a script with claude -p.
How ClipSpeed works with Claude Code
- claude mcp add registers the HTTP server; /mcp in a session completes the OAuth sign-in
- Claude Code discovers the ClipSpeed tools at session start and chains them:
submit_to_clipspeed→check_clips→schedule_post platform_settingsis read before composing so X's 280 and YouTube's 100-character title are met the first time- A time you name is booked exactly or refused with the next open slot; a taken slot is never silently moved
- Works with Claude.ai, Console, Bedrock and Vertex AI accounts; the ClipSpeed sign-in is separate and OAuth
Claude Code vs Claude Cowork vs the Claude connector: Claude Code (terminal, vs code, jetbrains), Claude Cowork (claude desktop), Claude (claude.ai) (browser, desktop, mobile). This page is about Claude Code; the Claude Code guide compares them.
# Register the server (OAuth; sign in with /mcp inside a session)
claude mcp add --transport http clipspeed https://api.clipspeed.ai/mcp
# No browser on this machine? Use an API key header instead
export CLIPSPEED_API_KEY="csai_live_..."
claude mcp add --transport http clipspeed https://api.clipspeed.ai/mcp \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $CLIPSPEED_API_KEY"
# Verify
claude mcp list
claude "List my connected ClipSpeed channels"# What the agent reads at connect time (tool descriptions, abridged)
list_channels Connected platforms, what each accepts, limits, your time zone
connect_channel A private 10-minute link to connect one platform
platform_settings Limits, title rules, link handling, pacing per platform
schedule_post clip_id | text | media_url → platforms[], scheduled_at, preview
list_scheduled_posts Scheduled, sending, posted, failed — with post links
update_scheduled_post Edit copy while still scheduled (the time never moves)
cancel_scheduled_post Cancel; undoable 72 h in the app
post_analytics Views, likes, comments, shares where the platform gives them
submit_to_clipspeed Start clipping a video or stream link → projectId
check_clips Finished 9:16 clips with titles, transcripts, viral scores
generate_image / generate_video / wait_for_generation
# YouTube: video · text 5,000 · title 100 requiredUpload to YouTube and other platforms from Claude Code
One request can book the same content to YouTube and other channels, each keeping its own settings and its own slot. Every platform below has its own Claude Code guide.
Also works with
YouTube and Claude Code: frequently asked questions
How do I upload to YouTube from Claude Code?
Run claude mcp add --transport http clipspeed https://api.clipspeed.ai/mcp in your terminal. Start claude and run /mcp. Pick clipspeed and authenticate; a browser tab opens for the ClipSpeed sign-in. Approve it. Connect YouTube in ClipSpeed (or ask Claude Code for a connect link; it is private and valid for ten minutes), then describe the post in plain language. Claude Code reads the YouTube rules, drafts within them, shows the plan and books on your yes.
What can Claude Code post to YouTube through ClipSpeed?
Upload Shorts and full videos with a title, description, hashtags and a privacy setting. YouTube takes video posts; a text-only request is refused with a message naming what it accepts. Text is limited to 5,000 characters. A title is required and is capped at 100 characters.
Which YouTube settings can Claude Code control?
The fields in the settings reference above: title, text, hashtags, privacy_status, clip_id or media_url, scheduled_at, preview. Mention any of them in plain language ("unlisted", "tomorrow at 9", "preview first") and Claude Code sets the matching field before it books.
Do I need a YouTube API key or developer account?
No. You connect YouTube to ClipSpeed once through YouTube's own sign-in, and Claude Code talks to ClipSpeed over OAuth. No YouTube developer key, bearer token or password is pasted anywhere.
How many YouTube posts a day can Claude Code schedule?
Video on YouTube is at least 4 hours apart, up to 4 a day under your plan. When a time is taken, the booking is refused with the next open slot rather than moved. Ask for preview to see a day's plan and the remaining cap before anything is booked.
Can Claude Code post to YouTube from a script or a cron job?
Yes. Claude Code's headless mode (release.sh) runs one prompt and exits, and the ClipSpeed server registered on that machine does the booking. On a runner with no browser, authenticate with a ClipSpeed API key header. Keep preview on so the run reports a plan before it books.
Is posting to YouTube from Claude Code different from Claude Cowork?
The booking is identical: the same rules, the same calendar, the same refusals. What differs is where you work. Claude Code: terminal, vs code, jetbrains; headless with claude -p. Claude Cowork: claude desktop, works with local folders and desktop apps, no terminal.