Rippr
📇 🏠 - YouTube transcript extraction for AI agents. Clean text, timestamps, or structured JSON from any video. No API keys required. Install via npx rippr-mcp.
Quick Install
{
"mcpServers": {
"mrslbt-rippr": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"mrslbt-rippr"
]
}
}
}Using an AI coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.)? Copy a ready-made prompt that tells it to fetch the setup instructions and install this server for you.
Documentation Overview
rippr
YouTube transcript ripper for humans and AI agents.
Website · Chrome Web Store · MCP Server (npm)
Three ways to use rippr
🌐 Website — rippr.me
Paste a YouTube URL, get the transcript. Clean text, no signup.
🧩 Chrome Extension — Chrome Web Store
One-click transcript extraction directly on any YouTube page. Multiple output formats (RAG, JSON, Markdown).
🤖 MCP Server — npm
Connect rippr to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP-compatible client. Saves each transcript to ~/rippr/transcripts/ and returns the file path to the model.
Desktop clients only. rippr runs as a local stdio process, so it works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code CLI, and Cursor. It does not work with cloud-hosted clients (claude.ai on the web, the Claude mobile app, or Claude Code on phone / web), which can't spawn local processes.
npx rippr-mcp
Add to Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json):
{
"mcpServers": {
"rippr": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "rippr-mcp"]
}
}
}
Then ask: "Rip this YouTube video: [url]". See mcp/README.md for the full tool surface.
Output formats
- RAG (.txt) — single continuous text block, optimized for chunking and embedding
- Structured (.json) — timestamped segments with metadata
- Readable (.md) — markdown with headers and formatting
How it works
Multi-strategy extraction for maximum reliability:
- Innertube API — YouTube's internal player API (Android client)
- HTML scraping — parses
ytInitialPlayerResponsefrom page source - Transcript panel — opens YouTube's built-in transcript panel as last resort
Caption XML parsed in multiple formats (srv3, timedtext, JSON3). Retry with exponential backoff on transient failures.
Privacy
Runs entirely on your machine. No data sent to external servers. No accounts, no tracking. Only communicates with YouTube's own APIs.
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Disclaimer
Rippr is an unofficial, community-built tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by YouTube or Google LLC. YouTube is a trademark of Google LLC.
Rippr accesses publicly available YouTube transcript data through endpoints that YouTube's own apps use. Use is subject to YouTube's Terms of Service, and use is at your own risk. The author accepts no liability for takedowns, rate limits, account actions, or any other consequences of use.
If YouTube changes their internal APIs in ways that break extraction, the tool may stop working without notice. For long-term production use, consider the official YouTube Data API v3 with an API key (not currently supported by this package).