youtube-thumbnail-analyzer

youtube-thumbnail-analyzer is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills. It costs 133 tokens per session (1,588 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A YouTube thumbnail analysis skill downloads thumbnails from top-performing videos for a topic or channel and examines their visual patterns. Thumbnails are the preview images shown for YouTube videos.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to study thumbnails for a keyword or YouTube channel. It can fetch thumbnails through the YouTube Data API and analyze design trends, provided an API key is available.
Why use it?
It helps identify how successful videos use color, text, faces, and composition without inspecting each thumbnail manually.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Use it to study thumbnails for a keyword or YouTube channel. It can fetch thumbnails through the YouTube Data API and analyze design trends, provided an API key is available.

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Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills --skill youtube-thumbnail-analyzer
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for youtube-thumbnail-analyzer

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for youtube-thumbnail-analyzer

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 133 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,588 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00133 $0.01588
Opus 5 $0.00067 $0.00794
Sonnet 5 $0.00027 $0.00318
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00159

Measured 11d ago against content hash 982514a150fa, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

youtube-thumbnail-analyzer scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 11d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/fetch_thumbnails.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer/SKILL.md · 180 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 180 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

YouTube Thumbnail Analyzer

Download and visually analyze thumbnails from top-performing YouTube videos for any topic or channel.

Usage

/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer "air fryer recipes"
/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer @ChannelHandle
/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer --topic "Python tutorial" --max 20
/youtube-thumbnail-analyzer @ChannelHandle --top 15

Instructions

Step 1: Parse Arguments

Input mode (one of):

  • Topic/keyword: search YouTube for top videos on this topic
  • Channel (@handle, URL, or ID): use this channel's top videos

Also:

  • --max N (optional): number of thumbnails to download (default: 20, max: 50)
  • --scan-limit N (optional, channel mode): cap uploads scanned (default: whole channel)

Step 2: Get the API Key

Check Claude memory for a YouTube Data API v3 key. If not found, ask:

"I need a YouTube Data API v3 key to fetch video data. You can get one from the Google Cloud Console. Please paste your key."

Step 3: Run the Bundled Script

Run scripts/fetch_thumbnails.py — resolve the path relative to this skill's own directory:

# Topic search
YT_API_KEY=API_KEY python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/fetch_thumbnails.py --topic "TOPIC" --max 20

# Channel
YT_API_KEY=API_KEY python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/fetch_thumbnails.py --channel "@handle" --max 20

Dependencies: pip3 install google-api-python-client requests.

The script ranks videos by views, downloads the highest-resolution thumbnail available (maxres → sd → hq → mq), and writes an index.md alongside the images.

Step 4: Read the Data

reports/data/thumbnail-analysis-<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.json

Thumbnails land in reports/thumbnails/<slug>-<YYYY-MM-DD>/ with an index.md in the same folder. The JSON's videos[].thumbnail_path gives each image's full path.

Step 5: Visually Analyze the Thumbnails

This is the step that makes this skill unique — Claude can see images.

Read each downloaded thumbnail with the Read tool (it supports images). For each:

Read the full file on GitHub · 180 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 11d ago First seen · 180 lines · 133 tokens per session scan A 982514a150fa

Subscribe to this mod's changes

youtube-thumbnail-analyzer is a skill published in the GitHub repository nikhilbhansali/youtube-data-skills (2 stars, last pushed 24d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 133 tokens to every session and 1,588 once invoked, about $0.0007 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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