fast-transcript

name	fast-transcript
description	Use this skill when the user wants to transcribe or inspect audio or video with fast-transcript via `fscript`, including local files and remote URLs such as social media links. It can also do diarization.

fast-transcript

Use the local fscript CLI for transcript-first analysis of media.

Default workflow

1. For questions, summaries, note-taking, quote-finding, and general information extraction, use text output:

fscript "<media-or-url>" --stdout --text
fscript "<media-or-url>" "/tmp/transcript.txt" --text

Use --stdout when you want printed output and a file path when you want a saved transcript. --text keeps timestamps but removes speaker labels. In current upstream fscript, text modes do not run diarization.

2. If you want to remove timestamps, switch to plain text:

fscript "<media-or-url>" --stdout --text=plain

3. If you need speaker attribution, use diarization:

fscript "<media-or-url>" --stdout

4. Read the transcript, answer the user, and only keep the transcript on disk when it helps with follow-up work.

5. Only check availability or open help when there is a real reason:

command -v fscript
fscript --version

Use these checks on first-session failures, when fscript is missing from PATH, or when you need to confirm flags. Do not run them mechanically before every transcription.

5.1 Installation

Install with Homebrew:

brew tap brenorb/tap
brew install fast-transcript

Run without installing:

uvx fscript --help

Or install the Python entrypoint with uv:

uv tool install fscript

First use downloads the ASR model automatically. Remote URLs also rely on yt-dlp, so make sure yt-dlp is on PATH or available via uvx yt-dlp.

When to use diarization

Only opt in to diarization when the task depends on speaker identity, turn-taking, or quotes attributed to different people.

fscript "<media-or-url>" --stdout

Examples:

• Interviews where the user asks who said a quote
• Podcasts with multiple recurring speakers
• Panels or debates where attribution matters

Defaults

• Prefer --text for faster general information retrieval.
• Prefer stdout for quick one-off analysis and a file path for longer transcripts you will revisit.
• Use --text=plain if timestamps are noise.
• Diarization is slower; only enable it when speaker attribution matters.

Remote media notes

• fscript accepts remote URLs directly, including YouTube links and other social media URLs that yt-dlp supports.
• For remote URLs, fscript prefers platform-provided manual subtitles when they exist.
• If you want to override that and transcribe locally anyway, rerun with -l / --local.
• If only auto-captions or no captions exist, fscript falls back to downloading the media and transcribing locally.

Gotchas

• The default speaker-aware mode enables diarization when available, but --text avoids that path.
• --speakers is useful for attribution, but it adds clutter when the user only wants facts or answers.
• --clean is on by default and compresses pathological repetition such as we we we we into we... we. Use --raw to disable that cleanup for a run.
• If stdout is too large for the current task, write to a temporary file and search or summarize from there.