Connector · Business and support

A YouTube teammate in Slack that reads the channel and asks before it publishes.

Chickpea gives a Slack channel a named AI teammate that holds its own YouTube connection: a YouTube AI agent bound to the channels an Admin selected. You sign in with Google on a page Chickpea serves, and until those channels are picked the teammate is given no YouTube tools at all. Ask it how the channel is doing or which videos are working, and the numbers come back in the thread. Every write on YouTube counts as publication, so it says what it would post and waits for a yes.

What people ask it.

The teammate is @growth, in #growth. Pick a scenario to watch it play.

# growth
24
Today
D
Dana
@growth how is the Northwind channel doing, and what went up in the last two weeks?
👀 1
growthAPP
Northwind has 41,208 subscribers and 3.24M views across 187 videos. Four things went up since Sep 3.
PublishedVideoViewsComments
Sep 15Pricing, explained in 3 minutes6,14083
Sep 11Northwind in five minutes18,902411
Sep 8Connecting an account2,31824
Sep 4Release notes, August1,0969
growth·Claude Sonnet 5·Configure
BIS
Aa
  • How the channel is doing Read only

    @growth how many subscribers does the Northwind channel have now, and how many total views@growth what went up on the channel in the last two weeks

    Reads never need confirmation. One capability returns identity and statistics for a selected channel, which is where the subscriber, view, and video counts come from. Another lists what happened on that channel over a window of at most 31 days. Those figures are the totals YouTube reports today, so a question about watch time or retention comes back as a question rather than a wrong number.

  • Which videos are working Read only

    @growth top five videos published this year, with views, likes, and comment counts@growth list what we put out last month and how each one did

    A long answer comes back as a table in the thread. The teammate lists a page of up to 50 videos owned by a selected channel. It then reads details for up to 50 of them in one call, which is where per-video views, likes, and comment counts come from. It also reads playlists, playlist items, and caption track names. Caption text itself never comes back.

  • Playlists, and a reply under a comment Asks first

    @growth put the three onboarding videos into a new unlisted playlist called Onboarding 2026@growth reply to the question under the launch video and point them at the docs

    Every write here counts as publication, so the teammate proposes each one and applies it after someone says yes in the thread. It creates or updates one playlist, adds one video to a playlist, and posts one comment or one reply. A comment goes out as the connected channel rather than as you. It can read the replies under a comment you name first.

  • Change a video, or publish one Asks first

    @growth retitle the pricing walkthrough and rewrite its description from this draft@growth upload the clip in the workspace as unlisted, then set its thumbnail

    One video changes at a time: title, description, tags, category, or visibility. Turning a video public is publication, and so is the upload itself. The teammate shows the exact title, the visibility, and the channel it would go to, then waits. An upload takes a file already in the teammate's workspace, at most 8 MB, as MP4, WebM, or QuickTime. Chickpea freezes and checks that file before anything leaves.

  • On a schedule Applies at once

    @growth every Monday at 9am Pacific, post the channel numbers here with the top five videos@growth every Friday at 4pm Eastern, list what went up on the channel this week

    A schedule saves on the spot. It needs an explicit time zone and runs under the YouTube connection of the person who asked. Before each run Chickpea re-reads the teammate, the Slack channel grant, and that connection, and a missing one fails the run with a named reason. Three failures in a row pause the schedule instead of retrying it forever.

Connect it

Five steps, from Admin or from Slack.

You sign in through a page Chickpea serves, never in Slack. The link the teammate posts is good for one action, for one teammate, for 24 hours.

  1. In Chickpea Admin, open the teammate, then Connections, find YouTube, and choose Connect. Or ask in Slack, @growth connect YouTube, and follow the link it posts.
  2. Choose who uses it. Team is one shared Google account that everyone who can use the teammate acts through. Personal means each member signs in as themselves, and the teammate uses your account only for your requests.
  3. Choose Continue to sign in. A hosted Google sign-in opens in a second tab, never in Slack, and this connector has no token to paste anywhere. Read the permissions on that screen. The grant you approve there can be wider than the capability list the teammate is handed. The attempt stays open for 30 minutes.
  4. An Admin selects the YouTube channels. Until that is saved the connection stays pending and the teammate gets no YouTube tools at all. Select Choose, tick the channels, then Save access.
  5. Ask something. @growth how many subscribers does the channel have now is a good first question, because it reads and publishes nothing.

A connection belongs to one teammate. Giving a second teammate YouTube means a second sign-in, with its own consent and its own channel selection. Chickpea stores an opaque local handle and a display label for each channel, so the YouTube channel ID never reaches the teammate. An unknown or unselected handle fails before anything is dispatched.

A managed connector has no discovered tool list. The teammate is handed a fixed list of capabilities that Chickpea curates, not YouTube's whole API. Nine of them read: the channel and its statistics, its recent activity, its videos and their details, its playlists and playlist items, caption track names, the replies under one comment, and a public search. Eight write, and every one is classed as external publication: playlists, playlist items, comments, replies, a video upload, video metadata, and a thumbnail. Deleting, account administration, permissions, bulk moderation, and raw API calls are absent. The capability list is in the product source.

# growth
24
Today
D
Dana
@growth connect our YouTube
👀 1
growthAPP
Open this link, choose team or personal, and sign in to Google there. Nothing is pasted into Slack, and only people in #growth can use the connection through me.
Sign in with Google
growth·Claude Sonnet 5·Configure
growthAPP
Signed in, and the connection is pending. An Admin has to pick the YouTube channels I may reach before I get any YouTube tools. That is in the connection row, under Choose.
growthAPP
One channel is selected now, Northwind. I can read its statistics, videos, and playlists. Anything that would publish there I’ll show you first and wait.
growth@growth
Reads the Northwind channel and publishes only when asked.
has access to YouTube
1
BIS
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Questions people ask

Does it use YouTube's MCP server?

No. YouTube is a managed connector here, and no MCP server is involved anywhere in it. The teammate calls a fixed list of capabilities that Chickpea defines, against the channels an Admin selected. Search "youtube mcp" and page one is community-built servers. A GitHub repository ranks first, then mcpservers.org, ytmcp.com, a directory listing 139 of them, and a Reddit thread from someone asking for critique of their own. Nothing on that page is published by YouTube.

What is a YouTube AI agent in Slack?

A named teammate that lives in a channel and holds its own YouTube connection. You mention it the way you mention a colleague. It reads statistics for the channels an Admin approved, answers in the thread, and proposes anything that would publish. Nothing arrives from YouTube on its own. Something has to be asked in the channel, or a schedule someone set has to come due.

Is this Ask Studio?

No, and they sit somewhere else. YouTube's help page describes Ask Studio as an AI creative partner built directly into YouTube Studio, to brainstorm video ideas, get channel insights, and analyze performance. It runs on the web in Studio and is available to most creators globally. The same page says Official Artist Channels, Made for Kids channels, and creators under 18 do not have access. A Chickpea teammate lives in a Slack channel, holds other accounts beside YouTube, and answers where the conversation already is.

Why is the connection still pending?

Because nobody has picked the channels yet. Signing in with Google is not enough on this connector. An Admin has to select one or more YouTube channels before the teammate receives any YouTube tools. Open the connection row, select Choose, tick the channels, and select Save access.

Can it read watch time or the Analytics reports?

No. Nothing in the capability list reaches the YouTube Analytics API. It reads channel totals for subscribers, views, and video count. It reads per-video views, likes, and comment counts, plus channel activity over a window of at most 31 days, playlists, and caption track names. Watch time, audience retention, traffic sources, and demographics are absent, so it says it cannot answer rather than estimating.

Can it read every comment on a video?

No. One capability reads the replies under a comment you name, and there is nothing that lists a video's comment threads. Per-video comment counts come back with the video details, so it can tell you which video drew the most. It can publish one comment or one reply, as the connected channel rather than as you, and that asks first. Nothing deletes, hides, or moderates a comment.

Can it delete a video, or anything else?

No. Nothing in the capability list deletes a video, a playlist, or a comment, and nothing administers the account, changes permissions, or moderates in bulk. Those capabilities are absent rather than blocked, so the teammate has nothing to call, whatever it is asked. Past that, every write capability here is classed as external publication. Chickpea refuses one during a turn unless your own message names that action, and it still waits for a yes.

Can it schedule a video to go live at a set time?

Not on YouTube. The upload capability takes a visibility of private, unlisted, or public and no publish-at time, so there is no way for it to set one. What works is uploading as private or unlisted, then asking it to make that video public later. That is its own publication and its own yes. The Slack side does have schedules: ask for a Monday digest with a time zone and it saves on the spot.

What is the daily quota, and what happens when it runs out?

Google's documentation gives a project a default allocation of 100 search.list calls, 100 videos.insert calls, and 10,000 units a day for everything else. Going past that needs an audit showing the project complies with the YouTube API Services Terms. Chickpea holds those same three budgets for the whole deployment, per Pacific-time day, and reserves the units before it calls out rather than after. When a budget is gone the request fails with a reason instead of half publishing something.

Is there an official YouTube app for Slack?

Nothing published by YouTube turned up in the Slack Marketplace on this page's date. What ranks for "youtube slack integration" is automation services: Zapier, Make, IFTTT, and rss.app. They wire a trigger such as New Video in Channel or New Comment on Video to a Slack message. Keep one of those if you want an announcement when a video goes live, because a Chickpea teammate hears nothing from YouTube on its own.

Try it

Give a channel a YouTube teammate.

One deploy into your own Cloudflare account, connect Slack, sign in to YouTube, ask. Apache 2.0, no seats, no metering.

Star on GitHub4

Or run it on Node. The setup guide covers both.