@askchannelai/sdk

Tiny, dependency-free TypeScript client for the AskChannel API. Ask cited questions over a YouTube channel's transcripts and search the channels you can ask. Works anywhere fetch exists — bots, web apps, edge, CLIs.

npm i @askchannelai/sdk

Requires Node 18+ (or any runtime with a global fetch).

Quick start

import { createAskChannelClient } from "@askchannelai/sdk";

const ac = createAskChannelClient({ token: process.env.ASKCHANNEL_TOKEN });

const res = await ac.ask({
  channel: "@hubermanlab",          // @handle (with/without @) or a UC… id
  question: "What's the best time to drink coffee?",
});

console.log(res.answer);            // clean prose, no inline markers
for (const c of res.citations) {
  console.log(`${c.videoTitle} → ${c.url}`); // deep-linked to the timestamp
}

Get a token

ask() needs a premium AskChannel API token (starts with askchannelai_), created in your AskChannel account (Account → API). One token = one account; all calls share that account's daily question quota. searchChannels() is public and needs no token.

Ready-to-send chat rendering

Pass platform and the response gains a rendered field already formatted for that app — so a bot can forward it verbatim with no citation-formatting code:

const res = await ac.ask({
  channel: "@lexfridman",
  question: "What does he think about AGI timelines?",
  platform: "telegram",            // telegram | discord | whatsapp | slack
});

// HTML for telegram, mrkdwn for slack/whatsapp:
bot.sendMessage(chatId, res.rendered as string, { parse_mode: "HTML" });
// discord returns { content, embeds } instead of a string.

Search the channels you can ask

const channels = await ac.searchChannels("rogan");
// → [{ id, title, handle: "@joerogan", thumbnail, videoCount, ... }]

This hits the indexed-channels search (only channels already on AskChannel), which is what you want for a "pick a channel" dropdown. Returns [] for an empty query and degrades to [] (rather than throwing) on a search-side error.

Errors

Every call throws AskChannelError on failure, with a stable code you can switch on:

import { isAskChannelError } from "@askchannelai/sdk";

try {
  await ac.ask({ channel: "@unknown", question: "hi" });
} catch (e) {
  if (isAskChannelError(e)) {
    switch (e.code) {
      case "not_found":      /* channel not indexed */ break;
      case "quota_exceeded": /* 403 daily limit */ break;
      case "unauthorized":   /* 401 bad/non-premium token */ break;
      case "rate_limited":   /* 429 burst */ break;
      case "server_error":   /* 5xx outage */ break;
      case "network":        /* timeout / DNS / abort */ break;
    }
  }
}

API

`new AskChannelClient(options)` / `createAskChannelClient(options)`

Option	Default	Notes
`token`	—	Premium `askchannelai_…` token. Required for `ask()`.
`baseUrl`	`https://askchannel.ai`	API origin.
`defaultProvider`	`gemini`	`gemini` (faster) or `claude`.
`timeoutMs`	`70000`	Default per-call timeout.
`fetch`	global `fetch`	Inject a custom fetch.

`ask(params) → Promise<AskResponse>`

{ channel, question, provider?, platform?, signal?, timeoutMs? } → { answer, citations[], provider, rendered? }.

`searchChannels(query, opts?) → Promise<Channel[]>`

Indexed-channel search by title or handle.

Building a Telegram bot?

See examples/telegram-bot — a complete bot with an inline channel-picker dropdown built on this SDK.

License

MIT