How I built a YouTube live-stream blocker with Claude in one evening
17 October 2026 · 2 min read
What happened
On 15 October, YouTube announced that BBC News now streams live on YouTube in the UK. I pasted the announcement into Claude Code and asked for a way to block BBC content on YouTube, on as many devices as possible, so people could say they don’t need a TV licence. My message is below.
Claude didn’t start building. It checked TV Licensing’s own rules first and told me a BBC-only blocker wouldn’t do the job. You need a licence to watch any channel live, on any service. Sky News already streams live on YouTube all day, so blocking the BBC leaves the gap open. And BBC clips and uploads never needed a licence anyway.
So it suggested blocking every live stream on YouTube instead, and said up front that the YouTube apps on phones and TVs can’t be covered. I said yes. About 40 minutes later it was built and tested, and by midnight two different AIs had checked it for security problems. It’s called No Live, and it’s free.
Before and after
The build on its own
“Block BBC content on YouTube.”
→ An AI builds exactly that. It looks finished, and it doesn’t do the job: every other channel’s live stream still needs a licence.
The build, plus why
The same request, plus the reason: “so they can legitimately say ‘I don’t need it’.”
→ Claude checked the rule behind the reason, found the plan wouldn’t work, and suggested the version that does.
Why it works
The reason gives the AI something to check the plan against. “Block the BBC” can only be built. “So people don’t need a licence” can be checked against the real rules, and that’s where the first plan fell apart.
Then the plan came in three layers before any code. Stop live streams in the data YouTube hands its player. Take live tiles off the lists. And stop anything live that still starts playing. Each layer catches what the one before misses, and each can be tested on its own.
And it was tested on real YouTube, in Edge, with a control run first: without No Live, the BBC News live stream played for 9 seconds, so a pass means something. With it, all 13 checks pass and live streams play for 0 seconds. That proves it in Edge and Chrome on a computer. It hasn’t been tried on a real iPhone yet, and YouTube changes its pages, so it will need fixes now and then.
What it doesn’t do is said first, at the top of the instructions. It doesn’t decide whether you need a TV licence: that depends on everything you watch, and anything on BBC iPlayer needs one. It doesn’t work inside the YouTube apps, and it doesn’t touch other sites.
My first message
Word for word, typos and all, with one line of my opinion of the BBC cut, marked [...]. It’s short and it isn’t a plan. What mattered was the last line: the reason.
hey claude,side quest time! check out this news "[YouTube's announcement that BBC News now streams live on YouTube in the UK and US]" we absolutely need to come up with a way for people to be able to "block" BBC content on their youtube on as many devices as possible! [...] we need to give people the ability to block it, so they can legitimately say "i dont need it"
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