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Daily

Collect new YouTube videos on your topics into Airtable

Each day, new videos on the topics you follow are summarised and saved as records in Airtable.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Airtable, YouTube
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
YouTube API key; Airtable write

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, search YouTube for videos published in the last day about 'warehouse automation' and 'last-mile delivery', summarise each with AI and add them to my Research table in Airtable.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A logistics start-up wants to keep up with what is being said about its market on YouTube: conference talks, competitor demos, analysts' takes. Searching YouTube every day is tedious and the findings end up in someone's bookmarks.

A daily search that saves each new video with a short summary into Airtable builds a shared research library the whole team can filter and tag.

What you get out of it

  • A shared research library

    Every relevant video lands in one base the team can search, tag and comment on.

  • Summaries save viewing time

    A few lines show whether a video is worth watching before anyone presses play.

  • No duplicates

    Videos already saved are skipped.

  • Your topics, your words

    Search terms are yours to change as the market shifts.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every morning, ClickRuntime searches YouTube for videos on each of your topics published in the last day.

  2. It skips videos already saved.

  3. AI writes a short summary of each new video from its title and description.

  4. Each video is added to your Research table in Airtable with its topic, channel, link and summary.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Airtable
  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsDaily
Collect new YouTube videos on your topics into Airtabletoday, 9:00Succeeded
Airtable · Researchlast-mile delivery | Acme Freight on electric cargo bikes in city centres | Acme Logistics | 2-sentence summary

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Change what the AI looks for, or how it writes the result
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Airtable and YouTube steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
daily_topic_digest_of_new_youtube_videos_into_airtable.pyexample
from datetime import datetime, timezone, timedelta
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, ai, state

YT = "https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3"

def yt(path, **params):
    return http.get(f"{YT}/{path}", params={**params, "key": credentials.secret("YOUTUBE_API_KEY")}).json().get("items", [])

AT = "https://api.airtable.com/v0/appXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"

def at(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, f"{AT}/{path}", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('airtable', 'work')}"}, **kw)
    return r.raise_for_status() or r.json()

TOPICS = ["warehouse automation", "last-mile delivery"]

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    since = (datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(days=1)).strftime("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ")
    seen, records = set(state.get("seen") or []), []
    for topic in TOPICS:
        for v in yt("search", part="snippet", q=topic, type="video", publishedAfter=since, maxResults=25, order="relevance"):
            vid, s = v["id"]["videoId"], v["snippet"]
            if vid in seen:
                continue
            summary = ai.generate(f"{s['title']}\n{s['description']}", system="Summarise this video in 2 sentences.", max_output_tokens=100).text.strip()
            records.append({"fields": {"Topic": topic, "Title": s["title"], "Channel": s["channelTitle"],
                            "Link": f"https://youtu.be/{vid}", "Summary": summary}})
            seen.add(vid)
    for i in range(0, len(records), 10):
        at("POST", "Research", json={"records": records[i:i + 10], "typecast": True})
    state.set("seen", sorted(seen)[-5000:])
    return {"saved": len(records)}

FAQ

Common questions

How many videos does it save a day?
Up to 25 per topic by default, ordered by relevance. You can raise or lower that.
Can it filter out short or low-quality videos?
Yes. Ask it to skip videos under a few minutes or from channels below a subscriber count.
Does it need my YouTube login?
No. Searching public videos uses a YouTube API key.
What permissions does it need?
YouTube API key; Airtable write. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
Yes. It uses ClickRuntime's built-in AI, so you don't need an OpenAI or Anthropic key. Every plan includes a monthly AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Collect new YouTube videos on your topics into Airtable” from your assistant

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