node.js googleapis library cannot find module '/node_modules/googleapis/apis/youtube/v3'

I'm using Google Apis to fetch YouTube user info. I already have this working fine in another project, but for some reason I'm getting a strange error in this one. The goal is to fetch a list of videos scoped to a particular playlist id.

I'm using Mithril.js wih coffeescript. Here's the relevant snippet:

google = require 'googleapis'

Properties.controller = (options = {}) ->
    @showVideos = (playlistId) =>
        youtube = google.youtube('v3')
        google.youtube.playlistItems({part:'snippet', playlistId: playlistId}).then(videos) ->
          console.log videos

The google client loads fine, but on this line:

youtube = google.youtube('v3')

I get the following error:

Uncaught Error: Unable to load endpoint youtube("v3"): Cannot find module '/node_modules/googleapis/apis/youtube/v3'

I use this exact same code in another project on the same computer in a neighboring directory. They are both using the same version of googleapis (I copied the working folder to this project just to be doubly sure).

I tried doing this with some of the other client endpoints such as with the usage examples. None of them work. So it must be some kind of path variable?