Channel Shorts

When to use this

Use it to track a creator's short-form output: about 48 Shorts per page from the channel's Shorts tab, newest first, or most viewed first with sort=popular.

The Shorts tab only shows title, thumbnail and views. For likes, comments, upload date and length, pass a Short's url to the video endpoint; we don't fetch those for every Short, so a page stays one fast request.

Pagination. Pass the response's continuationToken back as continuationToken for the next page; it's null on the last page.

Unknown channels return 404 not_found; a channel without Shorts returns an empty list.

Parameters

All parameters go in the query string.

Example request

Replace YOUR_API_KEY with your key, or set LURKAPI_KEY for the code. Get a free key.

curl "https://api.lurkapi.com/v1/youtube/channel/shorts?handle=MrBeast" \
  -H "x-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY"

const params = new URLSearchParams({
  handle: "MrBeast",
});
const res = await fetch(`https://api.lurkapi.com/v1/youtube/channel/shorts?${params}`, {
  headers: { "x-api-key": process.env.LURKAPI_KEY },
});
const data = await res.json();
if (!data.success) throw new Error(`${data.code}: ${data.error}`);
console.log(data.shorts);

import os
import requests

res = requests.get(
    "https://api.lurkapi.com/v1/youtube/channel/shorts",
    params={
        "handle": "MrBeast",
    },
    headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["LURKAPI_KEY"]},
    timeout=60,
)
data = res.json()
if not data["success"]:
    raise RuntimeError(f"{data['code']}: {data['error']}")
print(data["shorts"])

Example response

A real response from this endpoint, captured from the live API and trimmed to a couple of items. Strings over 96 characters (mostly signed media URLs) are cut short and end in ….

{
  "success": true,
  "credits_remaining": 999993,
  "credits_charged": 1,
  "shorts": [
    {
      "type": "short",
      "id": "CEJXqm2eiJ0",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/CEJXqm2eiJ0",
      "title": "What’s Inside My Briefcase?",
      "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CEJXqm2eiJ0/sardefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEgCJUDEOAESF…",
      "viewCountText": "23M views",
      "viewCountInt": 23000000
    },
    {
      "type": "short",
      "id": "T_SMf9j50uc",
      "url": "https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T_SMf9j50uc",
      "title": "Can We Build an Entire Village?",
      "thumbnail": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/T_SMf9j50uc/sardefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEgCJUDEOAESF…",
      "viewCountText": "21M views",
      "viewCountInt": 21000000
    }
  ],
  "continuationToken": "4qmFsgK_CxIYVUNYNk9RM0RrY3NiWU5FNkg4dVFRdVZBGqILOGdhekNCcXdDRkt0Q0RLcUNB…"
}

Response fields

Every field of a successful response. [] marks a list: a[].b is the b of each item in a. nullable fields can be null; optional fields can be missing.

Caching and freshness

Responses are cached for up to 1 hour, so a repeat call within that window can return the same data. It still costs 1 credit.

Errors

Errors return { success: false, error, code, docs } with the HTTP status below. Validation errors, 401/402/429 rejections and 5xx failures are free; not_found is charged (how charging works). All error codes.

Use it in Claude

Once LurkAPI is connected to Claude, this endpoint is the youtube_channel_shorts tool. Ask in plain English, for example:

Use LurkAPI's youtube_channel_shorts with handle "MrBeast" and summarize what you find.

Claude calls youtube_channel_shorts with arguments like these, and each call costs 1 credit:

{
  "handle": "MrBeast"
}

Tool results skip nulls and empty lists to save tokens.