Operator guide

▶ YouTube Command Center.

YouTube Studio, inside ChannelHelm. A per-brand command center that manages your live videos, shows the analytics that matter (including the audience-retention curve), runs a real comments inbox, and edits captions and playlists — without leaving the app, and without giving up local-first control.

/youtube · per brand · all reads stay on your machine

Six tabs, mirroring Studio

Dashboard

Views, watch time, and net subscribers at a glance
Latest uploads with visibility + held-comment flags
How many comments need your attention

Content

Your live videos as a sortable, filterable library
Edit title, description, tags, and visibility in place — pushed straight to YouTube
Bulk-edit visibility or add a tag across many videos

Analytics

Traffic sources, geography, devices, demographics
Subscribed-vs-not (the closest the API gives to new-vs-returning)
Per-video audience-retention curve
Revenue when your channel is monetized

Comments

Published / held-for-review / likely-spam buckets
Reply, approve, hold, mark spam, reject + ban, delete

Captions

List, upload, and delete each video's caption tracks
Generate a track from the video's own transcript

Playlists

Create, edit, and delete playlists
Add and remove videos

One reconnect to unlock writes

Managing comments and captions and editing live videos needs a YouTube permission ChannelHelm didn't request before — youtube.force-ssl — and revenue needs yt-analytics-monetary.readonly. The first time you open the command center, a banner tells you exactly what's missing and links you to a one-click reconnect. Until you reconnect, everything is read-only and the banner stays put.

What it honestly can't do

Some Studio features simply aren't in YouTube's public API. Rather than fake them, the command center is upfront:

Feature	Why not
Heart / pin a comment	Not writable via the API — the inbox links you straight to Studio for those two clicks.
True new-vs-returning viewers	Not a public dimension — we show "subscribed vs not", labeled as the proxy it is.
End screens, cards, info cards	No public API.
Community posts	No public write API.
Content ID / copyright claims	No public API.

How it stays fast and within quota

Background workers sync your videos (hourly), comments (every 30 minutes), and analytics, captions and playlists (daily) into local tables, so every tab renders instantly. Writes happen the moment you click, then re-sync just the row you touched. If you ever hit YouTube's daily quota, the sync simply waits for the next window — it never breaks a brand. All of it runs on your own machine over your own YouTube connection; the only thing that leaves is the edit you explicitly make.