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Weekly

Email yourself an analysis of your YouTube comments

Every week you get an email on what viewers are saying in your comments, with the main themes, questions and ideas for new videos.

Runs
Weekly
Apps
Gmail, YouTube
AI
Yes, uses the built-in AI allowance
Access
YouTube API key (public comments); Gmail gmail.send

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every Friday, read the new comments on my channel's recent videos, have AI pull out the themes, top questions and five video ideas, and email the report to me and my editor from my Gmail.

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 cooking channel gets hundreds of comments a week asking for substitutions, recipe variations and new dishes. The creator and their editor plan videos on Monday and want to know what viewers have been asking for, without scrolling through every comment.

A weekly email that turns comments into themes and ideas gives the planning meeting a list that came straight from the audience.

What you get out of it

  • Plan from what viewers ask

    Recurring requests become video ideas with a ready audience.

  • Shared with the team

    The report goes to everyone who plans the channel, from your own Gmail.

  • Only new comments

    Comments already covered are skipped, so each week's report is fresh.

  • Catch problems early

    A cluster of complaints about audio or pacing shows up as a theme you can fix in the next edit.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every Friday, ClickRuntime finds your channel's recent videos and collects their comments.

  2. It skips comments it has already analysed.

  3. AI groups the new comments into themes, top questions and video ideas.

  4. The report is emailed from your Gmail to you and anyone else you listed.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsWeekly
Email yourself an analysis of your YouTube commentstoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · Comment reportComment report: 284 new comments. Top request: dairy-free versions (31 comments). Video idea: "5 weeknight curries under 30 minutes".

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 Gmail 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.
emailed_ai_analysis_of_youtube_comments.pyexample
import base64
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
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", [])

def api(name, version):
    return build(name, version, credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)

def send_gmail(to, subject, text):
    raw = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(f"To: {to}\r\nSubject: {subject}\r\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\r\n\r\n{text}".encode()).decode()
    api("gmail", "v1").users().messages().send(userId="me", body={"raw": raw}).execute()

UPLOADS = "UUxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    seen, comments = set(state.get("seen") or []), []
    for v in yt("playlistItems", part="contentDetails", playlistId=UPLOADS, maxResults=10):
        for c in yt("commentThreads", part="snippet", videoId=v["contentDetails"]["videoId"], maxResults=100, order="time"):
            if c["id"] not in seen:
                comments.append(c["snippet"]["topLevelComment"]["snippet"]["textOriginal"][:400])
                seen.add(c["id"])
    if not comments:
        return {"comments": 0}
    report = ai.generate("\n".join(comments[:400]), system="Analyse these YouTube comments: main themes with short quotes, "
                         "top questions, complaints, and 5 video ideas. Plain text.", max_output_tokens=900).text
    send_gmail("you@example.com, editor@example.com", f"Comment report: {len(comments)} new comments", report)
    state.set("seen", sorted(seen)[-5000:])
    return {"comments": len(comments)}

FAQ

Common questions

How many comments can it read?
Several hundred a week. If a video goes viral, the most recent comments are used.
Does it include the actual comments?
It quotes a few short examples for each theme so you can see what people said.
Can it analyse one specific video?
Yes. You can also send it a single video link and get a report on just that video.
What permissions does it need?
YouTube API key (public comments); Gmail gmail.send. 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 (weekly). 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 “Email yourself an analysis of your YouTube comments” from your assistant

Copy the prompt above, or connect your assistant first. Free plan, no credit card.