YouTube Research

• postplus-shared

  release-shell rules

• collecting channel metadata and subscriber counts
• collecting audience comment samples from a specific video
• collecting one or more public YouTube video URLs
• discovering a small YouTube video set from a broad query
• normalizing YouTube video metrics into local artifacts
• writing local raw payloads, normalized datasets, and short markdown summaries

• LinkedIn collection
• Facebook collection
• TikTok, Instagram, or X workflows
• publishing, deleting, or scheduling posts
• promising a subscriber list that YouTube does not expose publicly

Hosted Capability Boundary

• do not probe or print provider secrets
• do not ask the user to export them inside chat
• if a collection key returns a stable capability/network hard error, stop immediately instead of trying alternate shell commands

Default Collection Keys

• channel metadata and subscriber counts
  • collection key:

    youtube-channel-summary

  • use for channel metadata and subscriber counts
  • tested input shape:

    • channels = ["@Google"]

    • maxVideosPerChannel = 0

    • includeChannelInfo = true

    • includeVideos = false

  • current observed output fields include:

    • channelId

    • channelName

    • channelHandle

    • subscriberCount

    • totalVideos

    • avatarUrl

    • bannerUrl

• audience comments collection
  • collection key:

    youtube-comments

  • use for audience proxy research from comments on a specific video or Shorts URL
  • tested input shape:

    • startUrls = ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=<video-id>"]

    • sort

    • maxItems

  • current observed output fields include:

    • id

    • text

    • likeCount

    • replyCount

    • publishedTime

    • author

• downloadable video records
  • collection key:

    youtube-video-download

  • use when the workflow needs the rented downloader-backed record for explicit video URLs

Failure Posture

• fail if the request includes non-YouTube platforms
• fail if no YouTube public URLs can be discovered
• fail if hosted content collection returns malformed items without stable URL or id fields
• fail if the channel collection cannot resolve the channel handle or URL
• keep raw responses for debugging

Recommended Workflow

1. For channel research, start with

   youtube-channel-summary

   .
2. For audience research, collect a small comments sample from representative videos with

   youtube-comments

   .
3. For broad public video discovery, use the hosted content collection scripts below.

Release-Shell Execution Contract

• keep collection briefs, raw datasets, normalized outputs, and summary caches under

  <work-folder>/.postplus/youtube-research/

• keep only final user-facing summaries or shortlist exports outside

  .postplus/

• compile a small channel, comment, or public-video brief before the expensive collection step
• start with a bounded first pass:
  • one channel batch
  • one comments batch
  • one public video plan

Public Video Implementation

• skills/20-research/youtube-research/references/normalized-schema.md

• skills/20-research/youtube-research/scripts/run_youtube_video_collection.mjs

Hosted Collection Note

• ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/_postplus_shared/00-core/shared-collection/scripts/collection_actor_run.mjs