Cursor

How to use YouTube with Cursor

You want YouTube inside Cursor so it can research videos for a topic, find the original source video, build a watchlist from search results, and verify video references — without you copy-pasting between tabs. Here is the whole setup, once.

Create your YouTube gateway

The gateway is the thing Cursor connects to, and it is where you decide which YouTube tools an agent may use. You create it once and every client reuses it.

Create an Arcade account

Sign up and open the dashboard. The free tier is enough to follow this through.
Create an MCP Gateway and select your YouTube tools

In the dashboard, create a gateway and pick the YouTube tools you want to expose. The gateway is what your client connects to, and it is where tool access is decided.
Copy your gateway URL

Every client below needs it.
```
https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/<YOUR-GATEWAY-SLUG>
```

Create a YouTube gateway Opens the gateway builder in your Arcade dashboard.

Connect the gateway to Cursor

Heads up

Cursor does not refresh MCP OAuth tokens automatically. For a persistent connection, set Authorization to “Arcade Headers” on the gateway in the dashboard.

Open MCP settings

Command Palette (⌘⇧P / Ctrl+Shift+P) → Open MCP Settings, then click “New MCP Server”.

Add the gateway to mcpServers

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mcp-arcade": {
      "url": "https://api.arcade.dev/mcp/<YOUR-GATEWAY-SLUG>"
    }
  }
}

Try it out

Ask Cursor to use one of your YouTube tools.

Full Cursor guide in the docs steps verified 2026-08-13

Try these YouTube prompts

Cursor can now act on your YouTube account. Click a prompt to copy it.

Keep the agent limited to searching for videos and reading video details with a shared API key. Pair it with Contextual Access policies so the agent can inspect videos without access to other services or actions.

How to use YouTube with Cursor

Create your YouTube gateway

Create an Arcade account

Create an MCP Gateway and select your YouTube tools

Copy your gateway URL

Connect the gateway to Cursor

Open MCP settings

Add the gateway to mcpServers

Try it out

Try these YouTube prompts

Ready to actually ship your agent?