youtube-transcript

name	youtube-transcript
description	Fetch YouTube transcripts through DeepAPI or local fallback tooling and save clean text output.
category	research
risk	safe
source	community
source_repo	davidondrej/skills
source_type	community
date_added	2026-07-07
author	davidondrej
tags	["youtube","transcripts","research"]
tools	["claude","codex"]
license	MIT
license_source	https://github.com/davidondrej/skills/blob/main/LICENSE

YouTube Transcript (via DeepAPI, yt-dlp fallback)

When to Use

• Use when the user asks for a YouTube transcript, captions, subtitles, or spoken-content extraction.
• Use when DeepAPI or a local fallback can fetch the transcript safely.

Fetch a YouTube video's transcript and save a clean raw .txt file. Primary path is DeepAPI POST /v1/scrape/youtube/transcript. It runs server-side, so it avoids the local-IP bot flagging that plagues yt-dlp.

Save location

• If the user is in a real project/working dir → save there.
• Otherwise (no dir given, or cwd makes no sense) → save to ~/Downloads.
• Always name the file Channel_Title with spaces replaced by _ (e.g. David_Ondrej_title_of_video.txt). If metadata is unavailable, fall back to the video ID.

Primary path — DeepAPI

DEEPAPI_API_KEY must already be present in the environment. Do not read shell startup files or print secrets:

test -n "$DEEPAPI_API_KEY" || { echo "DEEPAPI_API_KEY is not set"; exit 1; }
BASE=${DEEPAPI_API_BASE_URL:-https://deepapi.co}

Run the scrape (keep the Idempotency-Key; retries must reuse the SAME one):

IDK=$(uuidgen)
curl -s --max-time 120 "$BASE/v1/scrape/youtube/transcript" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DEEPAPI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: $IDK" \
  -d '{"url": "VIDEO_URL", "maxCostUsd": "0.05", "waitForFinishSecs": 60}' \
  > /tmp/yt_transcript.json

• Non-English videos: add "language": "de" (etc.) to the body.
• status: running → wait next.afterSecs, then curl "$BASE$(jq -r '.next.path' /tmp/yt_transcript.json)" -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" until succeeded or failed.