YouTube Transcript API for Node.js

Use the HTTP API from server-side Node.js

The stable integration path today is the HTTPS API at https://api.scority.ai. Keep x-api-key on the server and call GET /v1/youtube/transcript with either video_id or video_url.

Fetch a transcript by video ID

This example uses the built-in fetch available in modern Node.js runtimes. Replace YOUR_API_KEY through an environment variable, not an inline literal.

const apiKey = process.env.SCORITY_API_KEY

if (!apiKey) {
  throw new Error("SCORITY_API_KEY is required")
}

const url = new URL("https://api.scority.ai/v1/youtube/transcript")
url.searchParams.set("video_id", "dQw4w9WgXcQ")
url.searchParams.set("language", "en")

const response = await fetch(url, {
  headers: {
    "x-api-key": apiKey,
    accept: "application/json",
  },
})

const body = await response.json()

if (!response.ok) {
  throw new Error(body.error?.code ?? "transcript_request_failed")
}

console.log(body.text)
console.log(body.segments[0])

Request by YouTube URL

Use video_url when your app stores full YouTube URLs instead of IDs. The API still resolves the request to a video ID before fetching or reading from cache.

const url = new URL("https://api.scority.ai/v1/youtube/transcript")
url.searchParams.set(
  "video_url",
  "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ",
)

const response = await fetch(url, {
  headers: {
    "x-api-key": process.env.SCORITY_API_KEY ?? "",
    accept: "application/json",
  },
})

Handle API errors explicitly

Scority returns a normalized error object with error.code and error.message. Do not parse raw upstream text or assume every failure is retryable.

Node client preview status

The repository contains a private @scority/sdk preview for future package work. For production integrations today, use the HTTP API examples on this page or generate against the OpenAPI spec.