Thumbnail Auto-Patcher
Shorts thumbnails: manual upload → set automatically on publish.
Challenge
Scheduled Shorts published with whatever frame YouTube picked — the scheduler locked thumbnails at publish time, and fixing each one by hand defeated the point of scheduling.
Solution
A background agent watches for new uploads and sets the designed thumbnail through the YouTube API within a minute of publish, pulling frame-perfect art from the local export.
Impact
Every Short ships branded with zero manual steps — verified live in production, running unattended since July.
The Stack
YouTube Data API
OAuth
LaunchAgents
Project screenshots coming soon
This system runs in production today — walkthrough visuals are being prepared.
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