Sources · Personal source · export guide
Export your YouTube history into a private AI brain
Watch history is arguably the strongest interest graph in existence, and it is yours to download. The brain turns it into channel-level taste, searchable by month, next to your subscriptions and playlists.
What a YouTube export holds — and what the brain makes of it
The YouTube slice of Google Takeout holds your watch history, search history, subscriptions, playlists (with every video title) and the comments you wrote. The brain builder reads watch history as a channel-level taste graph, searches as a search log, subscriptions and playlists as interests, and your comments as a voice layer. The videos themselves are not needed — untick them in Takeout and the export stays small.
On its own, the YouTube export answers "what have I been learning". Beside a LinkedIn or GitHub export it becomes more useful: the brain can line up what you watch against what you write and build, and show where the interests diverge.
Get the export
How to export your YouTube data
The exact clicks, as they are today. Platforms move menus; the engine’s source docs are updated when they do.
- 01
takeout.google.com → Deselect all → tick YouTube and YouTube Music only
- 02
In options keep history / subscriptions / playlists / comments — untick videos
- 03
Drop the archive on YouTube in Studio’s Sources — or tell Claude Code or Codex “build my brain from this”. The source is detected by itself, even inside a combined archive.
Then, next month
An export is a snapshot. Drop a newer one and press Update: your edits and _notes/ are kept, and the update report says what changed.
Then ask it
What you can ask a brain built from YouTube
Examples, not promises: the answer is whatever your notes hold, and every answer cites the notes it came from. The more exports you add, the more these questions cross sources.
- Which channels did I watch most in each quarter of last year?
- What was I searching for on YouTube when I started my current role?
- Which playlists have I built, and which topics do they cover?
- Which creators do I both subscribe to and comment on?
limitWatch history must be switched on in your Google account for the export to contain it; if it was paused, the brain sees only subscriptions and playlists.
Good to know
The honest answers.
Do I need to export my videos? No. Untick videos in Takeout’s YouTube options — history, subscriptions, playlists and comments are all the brain reads.
Is this the same as the Google Takeout source? It is the YouTube part of it. Export YouTube alone for the taste graph, or the full Takeout set for contacts, calendar and places as well.
Start
Your YouTube export already exists. Turn it into a brain.
Free and open source. Start with John’s demo brain while your export arrives.
Second Brain Studio · Mac (Apple silicon and Intel), Windows and Linux · free · MIT
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