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Daily

Keep a sheet of new videos from channels you follow

A sheet keeps a running list of every new upload from the channels you watch, and Slack gets a daily digest.

Runs
Daily
Apps
Google Sheets, YouTube
AI
Optional
Access
YouTube API key; Sheets edit

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, check the channels listed in my Channels sheet for new uploads, add each new video to the Videos tab and post a short digest to #research.

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 content team keeps an eye on competitors' and partners' YouTube channels. Subscriptions mix work channels with personal ones, and nobody has a shared record of what each channel published and when.

A sheet that logs every new upload, plus a daily digest in Slack, gives the team a shared view of what the channels they care about are putting out.

What you get out of it

  • A shared watch list

    The channel list lives in a sheet anyone can edit, so adding a channel to track takes one row.

  • A record over time

    Every upload is logged with its date, so you can see how often each channel publishes and what topics they cover.

  • Short daily digest

    One Slack message a day lists what is new, instead of notifications scattered across personal accounts.

  • Optional one-line summaries

    With AI turned on, each video gets a short summary so the digest says what it is about, not just its title.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every morning, ClickRuntime reads the list of channels from your Channels sheet.

  2. It checks each channel's latest uploads and skips videos it has already logged.

  3. New videos are added to the Videos tab with channel, title, date and link.

  4. A short digest of the new videos is posted to your #research Slack channel.

Before it runs live

  • Connect your Google Sheets account and pick the spreadsheets it may use
  • Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsDaily
Keep a sheet of new videos from channels you followtoday, 9:00Succeeded
Slack · #researchNew videos today: • Acme Analytics: Building a weekly KPI dashboard in 20 minutes https://youtu.be/Qw3Er5Ty7uI

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 Google Sheets 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.
track_new_videos_from_channels_i_follow.pyexample
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, state, notify

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)

SHEET_ID = "your-spreadsheet-id"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    sheet = api("sheets", "v4").spreadsheets().values()
    channels = [r[0] for r in sheet.get(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Channels!A2:A").execute().get("values", []) if r]
    seen, rows = set(state.get("seen") or []), []
    for ch in yt("channels", part="contentDetails,snippet", id=",".join(channels[:50])):
        uploads = ch["contentDetails"]["relatedPlaylists"]["uploads"]
        for item in yt("playlistItems", part="snippet", playlistId=uploads, maxResults=5):
            s = item["snippet"]
            vid = s["resourceId"]["videoId"]
            if vid not in seen:
                rows.append([s["publishedAt"][:10], ch["snippet"]["title"], s["title"], f"https://youtu.be/{vid}"])
                seen.add(vid)
    if not rows:
        return {"new": 0}
    sheet.append(spreadsheetId=SHEET_ID, range="Videos!A:D", valueInputOption="RAW", body={"values": rows}).execute()
    notify.slack("New videos today:\n" + "\n".join(f"• {r[1]}: {r[2]} {r[3]}" for r in rows), channel="#research")
    state.set("seen", sorted(seen)[-5000:])
    return {"new": len(rows)}

FAQ

Common questions

How many channels can it follow?
Dozens. Each channel costs very little of YouTube's daily quota to check.
Does it need my YouTube login?
No. Public uploads are read with a YouTube API key.
Can it skip Shorts?
Yes. Ask it to skip videos under a minute and Shorts are left out of the sheet and digest.
What permissions does it need?
YouTube API key; Sheets edit. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No, but you can ask for an AI step (for example a summary). It then uses ClickRuntime's built-in 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 “Keep a sheet of new videos from channels you follow” from your assistant

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