Daily

List the comments you haven't replied to

A daily email lists comment threads on your videos that still have no reply from you.

Runs: Daily
Apps: YouTube
AI: Not needed
Access: youtube.readonly

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every morning, email me comments on my channel from the last 7 days that I haven't replied to, with links.

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

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

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A food channel posts three videos a week and each one collects dozens of comments. Someone asks what oven temperature the sourdough needs, another asks where to buy the pan, and a third points out an error in the description. YouTube Studio sorts comments by recency or popularity, not by whether you have answered them, so a question from last Tuesday scrolls out of sight and the viewer never hears back.

Once a day, the list of comment threads on your channel's videos is pulled and filtered down to the ones where no reply from the channel owner exists. The result lands in your inbox as one email with the comment text, the video it sits under and a link to the thread. You answer from the email instead of opening video after video.

It suits solo creators and small channel teams who want to answer questions without living inside Studio.

What you get out of it

Questions get answers while useful
A viewer asking about a recipe, a gear model or a timestamp wants the answer this week. A daily list means a reply goes out within a day or two instead of surfacing months later when the thread is stale.
Viewers see a channel that responds
People read the replies under a video before subscribing. Threads where the creator answered signal an active channel, and a pile of unanswered questions signals the opposite. The email names the video each thread sits under, so you do not need to remember where a viewer commented last month.
No scanning across your back catalog
Old videos keep drawing comments for years. The email names the video each unanswered thread belongs to, so you skip the manual tour through dozens of upload pages. The email names the video, which saves a long tour through your upload history.
Sponsor and buying questions surface
Comments like where did you get that or do you ship to Canada often come from people ready to buy. Catching them same day keeps affiliate and product sales from slipping away.
A finite list you can finish
Because only threads without your reply appear, the list shrinks as you work. You can clear it in one sitting and know nothing is waiting in a corner of your channel.
Support for the whole team
If a manager or editor helps with the channel, forwarding the same email gives them the identical to-do list, so two people do not answer the same viewer twice. It also keeps editors and community managers aligned on which threads remain.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Once a day, ClickRuntime reads the latest comments on your YouTube videos.
It leaves out your own comments and any thread you have already replied to.
You get an email listing the comments still waiting for a reply, each with the commenter's name, what they said and a direct link.

Before it runs live

Connect YouTube

What you get

RunsDaily

List the comments you haven't replied totoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · 6 comments waiting for a reply@northwind_ops: Does the export include archived projects? https://youtu.be/a1b2c3d4e5f&lc=UgxAbc123

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
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other 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.

unanswered_comments_reminder.pyexample

from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, http, notify

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

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    h = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {credentials.connection('google', 'work')}"}
    channel_id = http.get(f"{YT}/channels", headers=h, params={"part": "id", "mine": "true"}).json()["items"][0]["id"]
    threads = http.get(f"{YT}/commentThreads", headers=h, params={
        "part": "snippet,replies", "allThreadsRelatedToChannelId": channel_id, "order": "time", "maxResults": 100,
    }).json()["items"]
    open_threads = []
    for t in threads:
        top = t["snippet"]["topLevelComment"]["snippet"]
        replies = t.get("replies", {}).get("comments", [])
        if top.get("authorChannelId", {}).get("value") == channel_id:
            continue
        if not any(r["snippet"].get("authorChannelId", {}).get("value") == channel_id for r in replies):
            open_threads.append(f"{top['authorDisplayName']}: {top['textOriginal'][:150]}\nhttps://youtu.be/{t['snippet']['videoId']}&lc={t['id']}")
    if open_threads:
        notify.email_me(f"{len(open_threads)} comments waiting for a reply", "\n\n".join(open_threads))
    return {"unanswered": len(open_threads)}

FAQ

Common questions

Does a reply from a moderator or another account count as answered?

Only a reply from the channel owner counts. A comment from a moderator or a viewer under the thread does not remove it from the list, which is useful if you want the creator to personally answer certain questions.

Will it include comments held for review?

The list comes from comment threads YouTube returns for your channel's videos through its Data API. Comments held for review or marked as spam are not part of the normal thread listing, so approve them in Studio first if you want them to appear.

How many comments does it look through each day?

It reads the comment threads the API returns for your channel and checks each for an owner reply. Very large channels with tens of thousands of threads may need a narrower filter, such as only videos from the last 90 days.

What permissions does it need?

youtube.readonly. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's 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.

Weekly