Youtube Watch Stats

YouTube Watch Stats

Generate a personal viewing-stats report from the user's recent YouTube watch history. The headline question this skill answers is "what kind of viewer am I?" — with a particular focus on how much developer/technical content they watch and in what style (personality channels, shorts, tutorials, podcasts, conference talks, …), plus topics, channels, and watch-time estimates.

The skill has two stages that are deliberately separate:

1. Scrape — a Playwright script drives a browser into the user's logged-in YouTube (a dedicated profile they sign into once) and dumps raw history to a JSON file.
2. Analyze — you read that JSON and write stats-report.md.

Keeping them separate means the user can re-run the analysis on already-scraped data without opening a browser again, and it keeps the slow/fragile browser work out of the part that needs judgment.

Get consent before you scrape

The scrape stage reads the user's private YouTube watch history through their logged-in Google/YouTube account — authenticated personal data. Before opening any browser or running the scraper, tell the user plainly what will happen and get an explicit go-ahead. Something like:

"To do this I'll open a browser window, have you sign into YouTube once, and read your watch-history page (video titles, channels, dates) for the last ~30 days. It stays on your machine — nothing is uploaded. OK to go ahead?"

Wait for a clear yes before Stage 1. Never enter credentials or sign in on their behalf — the user does the login themselves in the window. If they only want analysis of data they already have (see below), you don't touch their account at all — skip the browser entirely.

Before you start: do you even need to scrape?

If the user already has scraped history data — they point you at a JSON file, or there's a history.json (or similar) in the working directory from a previous run — skip straight to Analyze using that file. Scraping is the expensive, flaky part; don't redo it unless you have to. Only fall through to the Scrape stage when there's no usable data yet.

Stage 1 — Scrape

Why it works this way

YouTube's Data API no longer returns watch history at all, and Google Takeout is a slow manual export with no video durations. The only reliable source is the logged-in history page at youtube.com/feed/history. So we drive a real browser there — using Playwright's agent CLI (@playwright/cli), which is built to be run from the terminal one command at a time by an agent like you.

The session uses real Google Chrome with a dedicated, persistent profile of its own (--browser=chrome --persistent) — not the user's main Chrome profile. That means: you never touch or lock their everyday browser, and they sign into YouTube once in the automation window; the persistent profile remembers it on every later run. (This sidesteps the old approach's pain: quitting Chrome to unlock its profile, and Chrome 136+ blocking debug access to the default profile.)

Important honesty caveat to carry into the report: the history page shows the duration of each video, not how long the user actually watched it. So every "watch time" number is an estimate based on video length, not true watched-seconds. Always label it as such — never imply it's exact.

Steps

1. Set up the CLI (idempotent — safe to run every time):

   bash <skill-dir>/scripts/setup.sh
   

   It prints two things to export: PWCLI (the playwright-cli invocation — playwright-cli or npx -y @playwright/cli@latest) and BROWSER_FLAG (which browser to use). Google Chrome is not required — setup picks Chrome if present, else Edge, else Playwright's bundled Chromium (BROWSER_FLAG empty). All work fine for YouTube. Export both: export PWCLI="<…>" BROWSER_FLAG="<…>".

2. Open the history page in a named session with a persistent profile:

   $PWCLI -s=yt open "https://www.youtube.com/feed/history" \
     $BROWSER_FLAG --persistent --headed --profile=<work-dir>/yt-profile
   

   --headed is essential — without it the browser runs invisibly (headless is the CLI's default) and the user can't sign in. A real browser window opens. Keep the profile dir stable across runs (e.g. a fixed path under the workspace) so the login persists. Verify it's visible with $PWCLI list (look for headed: true).

3. Check sign-in. Look at the command's snapshot / page title, or run $PWCLI -s=yt --raw eval "!!document.querySelector('ytd-video-renderer')". If it's false or you see a sign-in page, tell the user plainly: "A Chrome window opened — please sign into YouTube in it, then tell me to continue. You only need to do this once; I'll remember the session next time." Wait for them, then proceed. (Optionally $PWCLI -s=yt state-save <work-dir>/yt-state.json to snapshot auth.)

4. Scroll and extract with the bundled helper, which scrolls until the page stops loading new videos, then dumps the raw extraction JSON:

   PWCLI="$PWCLI" bash <skill-dir>/scripts/scroll_and_extract.sh yt <work-dir>/raw.json
   

   (It uses <skill-dir>/scripts/extract.js as the page-eval expression. For very heavy viewers, pass a higher max-scroll count as a 3rd arg.)

5. Clean it up into the file the analysis stage reads:

   python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/process_history.py --in <work-dir>/raw.json \
     --days 30 --out <work-dir>/history.json
   

   process_history.py unwraps the CLI's output, parses dates/durations, filters to the last --days, and de-dupes.

6. Close the browser when done: $PWCLI -s=yt close.

If you get no videos, a sign-in wall you can't pass, or the counts look wrong, see references/troubleshooting.md (login/profile, selector drift, scroll stalls, locale dates).

Alternative: a connected Playwright MCP

@playwright/cli is just Playwright's MCP browser tools wrapped as a CLI, so if a Playwright MCP server is already connected in this environment you can drive the browser through its tools instead — the logic is identical, only the calls differ:

Use the MCP route when it's already configured (cleaner structured results, no shell quoting). Use the bundled CLI otherwise — it's self-contained and needs no MCP server, which is why it's the default here. Either way, feed the harvested JSON to process_history.py and analyze the same way.

process_history.py writes a JSON array of items, each roughly:

{
  "title": "Building a Rust web server from scratch",
  "channel": "Let's Get Rusty",
  "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...",
  "duration_seconds": 1832,
  "is_short": false,
  "section": "Yesterday",
  "watched_date": "2026-06-24"
}

Stage 2 — Analyze

Read the JSON and produce one file: stats-report.md in the working directory. (Per the user's preference there's no separate data deliverable — the JSON is just working data.)

Before writing, read references/categorization.md. It defines the taxonomy and heuristics for two things that need to be consistent: (a) deciding whether a video is developer/technical, and (b) classifying its style. Apply real judgment using the title + channel — don't keyword-match blindly. A video titled "I quit my FAANG job" on a tech-career vlog channel is developer-adjacent personality/vlog content, not a tutorial.

What to compute

Work from the data, but use your own knowledge of channels and topics to classify. Cover:

• Coverage line — how many videos, over what actual date range, and note if some items had unparseable dates or were excluded.
• Developer/technical viewing — the centerpiece. This is what the user most wants, so go deep, not just a single percentage:
  • the dev share as count and % of videos and % of estimated time;
  • a three-way split (per references/categorization.md §1b): genuine third-party dev viewing vs the user's own/work uploads vs dev-adjacent — lead with the genuine number, since work-demo uploads can masquerade as "watching". This trap usually inflates the count, not the time (work clips are short), so show the split by count and note its small time impact;
  • a dev sub-theme breakdown (§1a: languages/frameworks, web, backend, devops/cloud, data/AI-ML, systems, system design, security, tooling, career) so you can say what kind of dev content;
  • dev styles (tutorial, course, conference talk, live-coding, podcast, news, personality) — "what format of dev content do they watch";
  • the top dev channels specifically.
• Video style breakdown — distribution across the styles in references/categorization.md (shorts, tutorial/how-to, podcast/long-form interview, personality/vlog, conference talk/meetup, news/commentary, live-coding/project build, course/lecture, music, entertainment, other). Give this both overall and within the dev/technical slice, since "what style of dev content" is a core question.
• Top topics — cluster titles/channels into ~5–10 topical themes (e.g. "Rust & systems programming", "AI/LLM tooling", "web frontend", "personal finance", "gaming"). Show rough volume per topic.
• Video-length buckets — for long-form, bucket durations (<5min, 5–20min, 20–60min, >1hr) and show the distribution. Shorts are all sub-minute — report them separately, not in these buckets.
• Top channels — the most-watched channels by video count, with a one-word tag of what each is. Caveat to state in the report: Shorts usually carry no channel name in YouTube history (channel: ""), so the channel ranking is effectively long-form only — say so when it applies. Also watch for work/own-account uploads dominating the ranking (e.g. the user's own demo videos); call those out rather than treating them as ordinary viewing.
• Watch-time estimates — clearly labelled as estimates from video length: total estimated hours, daily average (over the actual covered span, not the nominal --days), average video length, and the shorts-vs-long-form split (count and estimated time). Shorts dramatically skew counts but not time — call that out. A few very long items (multi-hour livestreams, "focus" playlists left running) can dominate the total and mislead — surface the total and the total minus the top 2–4 outliers, and flag likely background-audio items.
• Viewing patterns — derive these straight from the data (no extra scraping):
  • Rewatches — videos that appear more than once in the window. Count repeated video URLs in history.json; list the top few rewatched titles with channel/what-they-are. (This catches cross-day rewatches; same-day repeats are de-duped, so note it's a floor, not exact.)
  • Rhythm — the busiest day (most videos) and roughly how many of the covered days were active vs idle. A rough daily-volume sketch is fine.
  • Channel concentration — is viewing concentrated in a handful of channels or spread thin across many? (e.g. "top 5 channels = 40% of views" vs "90 channels, no repeats"). It says a lot about whether they follow creators or graze the algorithm. Classify content by judgment (title + channel + what you know), never by a fixed keyword table — hardcoded keyword lists overfit to one person's history and fail for everyone else.
• "What kind of viewer are you" — a short, specific, human paragraph that synthesizes the above into a recognizable portrait. This is the part the user actually remembers; make it sharp and a little fun, grounded in the numbers.

Report structure

Use this template (adapt headings to what the data supports — don't invent sections you have no data for):

# Your YouTube Watch Stats

_Last N days · M videos · <date range>_

## The short version
<2–4 sentence portrait — what kind of viewer they are, dev-content share,
dominant style, anything surprising.>

## Developer / technical viewing   ← the centerpiece, go deep
<dev share as count + % of videos AND % of estimated time.
Three-way split: genuine third-party dev viewing vs own/work uploads vs
dev-adjacent — lead with the genuine number.
Dev sub-themes (languages/devops/AI/system-design/career/…) with rough volume.
Dev styles (tutorial/talk/podcast/live-coding/…).
Top dev channels. What it all says about how they learn/stay current.>

## How you watch overall (video styles)
<style breakdown across all viewing; shorts vs long-form; length buckets.>

## Everything else you watch (topics)
<the non-dev topical clusters with rough volume — lighter touch.>

## Top channels
<ranked by video count; note Shorts carry no channel, so this is long-form only;
flag any own/work channels; note channel concentration (few-channels vs spread).>

## Viewing patterns
<busiest day + active-vs-idle days; most-rewatched videos with context.>

## Watch time (estimated)
<total / daily avg / avg length / shorts vs long-form — labelled as estimates;
surface the total minus the top 2–4 outliers; flag likely background-audio items.>

## Notes & caveats
<watch-time is video-length-based not actual; Shorts have no channel; topic %s
are judgment calls; any data gaps; profile/date caveats.>

Keep the prose tight and concrete — cite the actual numbers, name the actual channels. A stat with no interpretation is filler; an interpretation with no stat is a horoscope. Pair them.

Clean up

Close the browser session ($PWCLI -s=yt close). Then tidy up — but don't delete the user's data silently. Tell them what you're removing and leave the reusable bits:

• Safe to remove without asking: throwaway scratch like raw.json / title dumps.
• Keep history.json (or ask before deleting it) — it's the user's scraped data, and the whole point of the two-stage split is that they can re-run the analysis from it without scraping again. Mention it's there.
• Keep the persistent profile dir (yt-profile) — that's what lets the next run skip the login. (It holds their YouTube session cookies, so don't commit or share it.)

State briefly what you cleaned up so nothing disappears as a surprise.