name: youtube-synthesizer
description: Turn a YouTube video into a faithful-capture literature note in an Obsidian vault, with optional Dropbox sync via rclone. Use when the user wants to ingest a video (explainer, howto, lecture) into their personal source notes corpus. Combines transcript + load-bearing visual frames + structured extraction. Auto-discovers vaults under ~/ObsidianVaults/ and offers to push the new entry to dropbox: after writing.
YouTube Synthesizer
Orchestrates youtube-transcript and youtube-screenshotter to produce an Obsidian literature note for a video. Drives image selection by value-filter — every candidate frame is classified by KIND, and only frames that communicate something the transcript words don't survive into the entry. All vision and reasoning runs on your own native capability — no separate API calls, no extra billing.
You — the agent running this skill — do the visual judgment inline as you follow the procedure below. The skill produces faithful capture of the source; downstream synthesis into the user's mental model is their job, not yours.
Invocation
Required inputs from the user:
<URL> — YouTube video URL or 11-character video ID
Optional:
<vault> — absolute path to the target Obsidian vault, or a vault name relative to ~/ObsidianVaults/. The skill writes to <vault>/sources/videos/<ingested-date>-<sanitized-title>/. If omitted, see Phase D.1 for the discovery flow.--rerun — overwrite an existing entry at the target path. Without this flag, the skill refuses to overwrite (Phase D.2).--why <reason> — populate the why_ingested frontmatter field. If omitted, leave it as an empty string; the user can fill it in after.--no-sync — skip the post-write Dropbox sync prompt (Phase D.6). Otherwise the skill asks after a successful write whether to push the new entry to dropbox:ObsidianVaults/<vault-name>/sources/videos/<entry-dir>/.
If <URL> is missing, ask the user before starting work — do not guess. <vault> resolution is described in Phase D.1; do not guess that either.
Output
A single Obsidian literature note at <vault>/sources/videos/<sanitized-channel>/<ingested-date>-<sanitized-title>/ containing:
<sanitized-title>.md — frontmatter + body (TL;DR, key takeaways, chapter-level prose with inline images, references, commands & code). Same <sanitized-title> as the parent directory's title segment, without the date prefix (the directory carries the date already).image-NN.png siblings — one per kept informational frame, in source order
Grouping by channel keeps a creator's videos together — opening <vault>/sources/videos/the-grainbound/ shows every Grainbound entry side-by-side.
The value-filter principle
Images appear in the wiki entry only when they communicate something the transcript words don't, or when they help explain the narrative — even if that means several in a row.
The skill does not treat visual change as the trigger for capturing a "scene." A typical explainer video is ~70% talking-head plus filler (title cards, pull-quote text cards, between-content transitions) and ~30% load-bearing visuals (diagrams, maps, charts, code, UI, b-roll). Only the load-bearing 30% should appear as images in the entry. Number of images per video is whatever the source has of substance: 0 in a pure-talking-head section, 4-in-a-row during an animated diagram explanation.
Phase A produces an ordered list of (timestamp, frame_path, kind) triples for the kept frames; Phase D renders them as inline image embeds inside chapter-level prose.
Frame kinds
For each candidate frame, classify as exactly one of:
Drop (never embed):
talking-head — presenter's face/torso with no overlaid contentblank — empty background, between-content transition frame, near-uniform pixelstitle-card — text-only on illustrated background, where the text duplicates the transcript ("THE OXEN PARADOX," "CHAPTER 3," "THREE DAY RULE")pull-quote-card — emphasized restatement of what the presenter just said, with no additional information
Conditional (keep only when informational):
map-overview — establishing shot of geography with no annotations or overlays. Drop unless the surrounding transcript prose specifically discusses "this region" or "this part of the map," or it is the very first map shown (intro establisher). Most repeat-views of the same world map are noise.
Keep (embed at the frame's timestamp):
diagram — abstract illustration explaining a concept (stick-figures, flowcharts, conceptual visuals)map-with-overlay — map plus drawn-in markers (red dots, dashed lines, labels, route arrows, radius circles, etc.). The overlays carry the information.chart — data visualization (bar/line/pie/scatter, tables, math plots)code — source code, terminal output, command lines, config filesui — software interface, dashboard, application screenshotb-roll — real-world footage that is itself the subject (e.g. demonstrating a tool's physical use)animated-build-step — one frame of a multi-step animated diagram where each step adds information; keep all of them, do not collapse to the terminal framehybrid-with-info-overlay — talking-head with a substantive overlay (chart, code, callout) that adds information beyond what the words convey
When uncertain between drop-kinds and keep-kinds, prefer keep. Wasting one frame downstream is cheap; missing a real informational moment is expensive. When uncertain between two keep-kinds, pick the closer match — the kind tag is informational metadata only and does not change rendering in Phase D. When uncertain between map-overview and map-with-overlay, default to map-with-overlay (keep) — visible overlays the agent missed are still informational.
Phase A — Value-filter sampling
Produces an ordered list of (timestamp, frame_path, kind) triples for the kept frames.
A.1. Fetch transcript and metadata
<youtube-transcript scripts dir>/get_transcript.py "<URL>" → transcript with timestamps<youtube-screenshotter scripts dir>/video.py "<URL>" --no-download → metadata (channel_id, chapter_markers, description, etc.)
If the video has no transcript, error with a clear message and stop. Do not fabricate one.
Save the metadata block; Phase B reads description, chapter_markers, source_published_date, etc. from it.
A.2. Discover candidate timestamps
<youtube-screenshotter scripts dir>/discover.py "<URL>" -o <work_dir>
Returns a manifest with two source signals (scene_detect and phash_runs) and a unioned candidates list. Typical output for an 18-minute video is 60–140 candidates, depending on visual density.
The candidate list is high-recall: every sustained content stretch ≥ 3 seconds plus every sharp cut shows up. Most candidates will be drop-kinds (talking-head, title-cards) — the agent's job is to filter them down to the informational subset in A.4.
A.3. Extract candidate frames at full resolution
<youtube-screenshotter scripts dir>/extract.py "<URL>" -t <ts1> -t <ts2> ... -o <work_dir>
Pass the timestamp list from discover.py's candidates array. The video file is already cached (discover downloaded it); only the per-timestamp PNG extraction happens here.
A.4. Classify every frame by kind
Delegate this to sub-agents — do not load the frames into your own context. A 100+ candidate video produces ~50–150 MB of PNG data; loading it inline blows the main agent's context window for no benefit (you only need the classifications back, not the pixels). Use the Agent tool (subagent_type: general-purpose) with batches of 10 frames per agent.
For each batch, the sub-agent's job is:
- Read each frame image in the batch (Read tool on
frame_path)
- Read the transcript text spoken in a small window around each frame's timestamp (e.g. ±5 seconds — the main agent should pass the relevant transcript snippet to the sub-agent in the prompt so the sub-agent doesn't have to re-derive it)
- Pick exactly one kind per frame from the value-filter principle above
- Return a JSON array
[{timestamp, frame_path, kind, note}, ...] covering every frame in the batch — drop-kinds tagged with kind=drop plus a brief drop_reason, keep-kinds with their kind tag and a one-line note describing what the frame shows
The main agent then collates the per-batch JSON into the running keep-list without ever reading the frames itself.
The sub-agent prompt should inline the kind taxonomy and the value-filter principle (the sub-agent has no memory of the SKILL.md). Keep batches at ≤ 10 frames so each agent stays inside the 32 MB request-size limit on its own image reads (frames at 1280×720 PNG run ~0.5–1.5 MB each, so 20 reads can blow the limit on dense content).
Use the discover.py source and run_duration hints. They're informational signals, not classification rules:
source: phash_run with run_duration ≥ 5s → likely sustained content; if the transcript at that timestamp doesn't explain a visual, often a sustained talking-head pose (drop).source: phash_run with run_duration 3–5s + transcript hint of visual content ("as you can see," "here's") → likely a real diagram.source: scene_detect with no run_duration → sharp cut; could be diagram, transition, or pose change.
Use transcript context. The intended visual content is often signaled by the words around it:
- "As you can see," "let me show you," "here's the diagram" → expect a
diagram/chart/map-with-overlay/ui/code frame
- "And now we add," "next we get," "step three" → expect
animated-build-step
- Continuing to discuss the same conceptual point with no visual cues → likely
talking-head (drop)
When a frame is genuinely ambiguous between a keep-kind and talking-head, prefer keep.
A.5. Build-up sequence detection
After the per-frame classification, walk the keep-list in time order. Detect animated build-ups by adjacent same-kind frames whose pHashes are similar-but-distinct:
For each consecutive pair (K_i, K_{i+1}) in the keep-list:
- If both are the same keep-kind (e.g. both
diagram or both map-with-overlay)
- AND their pHashes have Hamming distance in the range 10–25 (visually related but not identical)
- AND
K_{i+1}.timestamp - K_i.timestamp ≤ 10 seconds
…then this is an animated build-up sequence. The presenter is layering information onto the same canvas (e.g. wheat → wheat+sheep → wheat+sheep+wool, or a map gaining radii circles).
Re-extract intermediate seconds inside the sequence. Sample every 2 seconds between K_i.timestamp and K_{i+1}.timestamp via extract.py, classify each, and keep all build-up steps in the keep-list. Re-tag the original frames as animated-build-step if appropriate.
A.6. Cross-time pHash dedup
Walk the entire keep-list (not just adjacent pairs) and drop any frame whose pHash is within Hamming ≤ 12 of an earlier-kept frame.
This catches the case where the same world-map appears at chapter 1's opening and at chapter 3's opening — visually identical but separated by minutes.
Exclude animated-build-step frames from this pass. A.5 deliberately keeps multiple frames of a single build-up sequence; their pHashes are similar by design, and re-pruning them here would undo A.5's work.
When a near-duplicate is detected, keep the earlier frame (it's the establisher) and drop the later one.
A.7. Whole-list audit pass
Re-read every frame in the keep-list as a curated set and ask, for each one, "is this image actually useful in the entry?" This is a separate pass from per-frame classification (A.4): the per-batch sub-agents in A.4 each see only their own 10–20 frames, so cross-batch redundancy and accumulated drift are invisible there.
Delegate this to a single audit sub-agent (Agent tool, subagent_type: general-purpose). The main agent passes the audit-agent the full keep-list (timestamp + frame_path + kind + note for every entry) and asks it to re-read the frames and return a JSON [{timestamp, decision: "keep"|"drop", reason}, ...]. The audit-agent reads the frames in its own context — the main agent never loads them. If the keep-list is large enough that even one sub-agent can't fit all the frames in 32 MB, partition by chapter or by index range and run several audit-agents in parallel.
For each frame, the audit-agent decides:
- Keep — the image communicates something specific (a concept, a build-up state, a map overlay, a piece of code). The entry is better with it than without it.
- Drop — the image is talking-head, a transition cartoon with no figures or labels, an empty title-card overlay, or visually redundant with another kept frame.
The audit-agent is told it is allowed to drop frames previously classified as keep-kinds — the audit's purpose is precisely to catch that drift. When dropping, prefer dropping later frames in a build-up sequence over earlier ones (the earlier frame usually carries the concept). For redundant maps, keep the one with the richest overlay.
The main agent then applies the audit-agent's decisions to produce the final keep-list.
A.8. Emit the final keep-list
Output a sorted list of (timestamp, frame_path, kind) triples. This is the input to Phases C and D.
The expected size depends entirely on the video's information density. A 1hr lecture-with-slides might produce 30–50 kept frames; a 20-minute video that's 80% talking-head might produce 4–6. There is no target count — the value-filter rule plus the audit pass set the bar.
Phase B — Frontmatter
This phase assembles the YAML frontmatter from the screenshotter's metadata block.
B.1. Generate the frontmatter dictionary
The frontmatter has two parts: a base schema shared with future article/pdf/substack source-skills (so the future sqlite3 indexer joins on a single contract), and YouTube-specific extras alongside.
Base schema:
source_type: youtube
source_url: <metadata.source_url>
source_title: <metadata.source_title>
source_author: <metadata.source_author>
source_published_date: <metadata.source_published_date>
source_description: |
<metadata.description verbatim from yt-dlp — author-written video description.
Block-scalar YAML so multi-line is fine. Leave empty string if no description.>
ingested_date: <today's date in YYYY-MM-DD>
tags: []
topics: []
why_ingested: ""
source_description is the verbatim author-written description. It is not rendered in the body — it would duplicate TL;DR / takeaways. It lives in frontmatter only, where it serves two purposes:
- Hallucination check — Phase C compares the agent-generated TL;DR against this prose. If the TL;DR introduces framing not grounded in either the transcript or the description, the agent has drifted.
- Searchable reference — the user (or a future re-run with an updated SKILL.md) can compare against the original.
YouTube-specific extras (alongside the base, not nested):
video_id: <metadata.video_id>
channel: <metadata.channel>
channel_id: <metadata.channel_id>
playlist_id: <metadata.playlist_id>
playlist_title: <metadata.playlist_title>
duration_seconds: <metadata.duration_seconds>
chapter_markers:
- title: "..."
start_time: 0.0
end_time: 153.0
transcript_corrections: []
transcript_corrections is a list of {original, corrected, timestamp} entries logging every soft-correct the synthesizer applied to the auto-caption text. Auditable; lets a future linter spot systematic captioner failures across the corpus. Empty list if no corrections were applied.
channel_id is the key for future "process all videos from this channel and cross-link them" runs — channels can rename themselves, IDs are stable.
Frontmatter discipline: strict key-value, no narrative prose. Structured data (lists of objects) is fine — chapter_markers and transcript_corrections are both lists of dicts. Narrative content goes in the body, never in frontmatter.
Phase C — Structured extraction
Produces the body sections of the wiki entry plus the tags / topics frontmatter and the transcript_corrections log. Source-faithful: extract what the video communicated; do not interpret or synthesize. Use the transcript text, the video description, and (for Commands & Code) what's visible in kept frames.
C.1. TL;DR
1–2 sentences capturing the video's central claim or thesis. The highest-leverage section for re-discovery six months later — the user reads this to remember what the video was about.
Source: transcript primarily. Look for explicit thesis statements (often in the first 60s and the final 60s), the chapter titles (especially the first), and the title.
Avoid: editorializing ("an interesting take on..."), interpretation ("the video argues that... but..."), framing for any particular use case.
C.2. Key takeaways
3–5 bullets, each a single sentence, capturing the points the video makes that the user will want to remember.
Source: transcript. A takeaway is a substantive claim the presenter makes — not a section header. "Three days is the maximum economic distance for hauling grain by ox" is a takeaway; "The presenter discusses grain hauling" is not.
Avoid: meta-statements about the video itself, restating the title, padding the list to hit a count (3 strong bullets beat 5 weak ones).
C.3. Hallucination check via description
Before finalizing the TL;DR and key takeaways, compare them against the verbatim video description (source_description from Phase B):
- Many channels include an "ABOUT THIS VIDEO" prose block in the description that summarizes the video's premise in the author's own words. This is ground truth for what the video is about.
- If the agent-generated TL;DR introduces framing or claims that aren't grounded in either the transcript or the description, the agent has drifted — re-do the TL;DR.
- Bias toward attribution-implicit voice rather than asserting claims as fact. An entry in
sources/videos/ is by definition a record of what the source said; the framing should make that clear without explicit "the video argues..." hedging on every sentence.
This is a check, not a copy. Do not paste the description prose into the TL;DR. Use it to detect drift.
C.4. Description-driven references
Pull the references list from the video description, not from the transcript prose. The description is where authors put the actual URLs they're pointing at; the transcript contains the verbal mentions ("check out my Discord," "see the resources on my website") but rarely the URLs themselves.
Where references come from (in priority order):
- URLs in the video description (
metadata.description). Most cited resources live here. Extract via regex on https?:// and www. prefixes.
- URLs spoken in-video and captured by the transcript (rare, but worth catching).
- People / titles named in the video without explicit URLs — emit as plain text (no fabricated URLs).
URL classification (kept vs dropped):
| Keep | Drop |
|---|
| Author's resource page / website (when video mentions specific content there) | Patreon / "support me" / tip jar |
| Project / tool homepages that are the topic of the video | Merch / store URLs |
| Cited papers, articles, books | Sponsor codes / affiliate links |
| GitHub / source code | Generic social media handles (X, IG, TikTok) |
| Related videos on the same topic | Newsletter signups (unless newsletter is itself the cited source) |
| Community spaces (Discord, forum) only when video points at specific topical content there | Generic "join my community" with no specific in-video reference |
| Standalone documentation links | Linktree / link-aggregator URLs (resolve to the destination if possible, drop if not) |
Output format: one bullet per kept reference, with the actual URL and a one-line annotation noting why it was cited:
- [The Grainbound resources page](https://thegrainbound.com/resources/) — host of the worksheet and practice map referenced in chapter 4.
- [The Grainbound Discord](https://discord.gg/PTnt72aj8B) — community where the worksheet+map are pinned.
- A separate video on vassal/loyalty systems — referenced at workflow step 7 (no URL provided in description).
Avoid auto-generated wikilinks at this skill version. Cross-references between video entries should emerge organically as the corpus grows; auto-linking on heuristic guesses tends to produce noise. A future cross-source linker (sqlite3-backed) will resolve names to wikilinks once matching sources/ entries exist.
C.5. Commands & Code
For howto / technical videos: every shell command, code block, or configuration the presenter demonstrates or types out, captured as code blocks with the language tag.
Source: kept frames where code is visible (read the image, transcribe verbatim) plus transcript where the presenter narrates a command.
For non-technical videos (worldbuilding, history, design discussion), this section is omitted entirely — do not pad with pseudo-commands.
Format:
for x in range(10):
process(x)
Each block gets a one-line lead-in noting the timestamp it came from, so the reader can locate the visual context.
C.6. Tags + topics
Populate the frontmatter tags and topics fields with a controlled list extracted from the video's content.
topics — broad subject categories (e.g. worldbuilding, medieval-history, economics, joinery, python). 1–4 entries. Helps the user filter the corpus along the major axes they think about. Match the user's existing vocabulary if you can see prior entries in the same vault.tags — finer-grained markers (e.g. grain-supply, oxen, radius-of-effect, dovetails, unit-tests). 3–8 entries. These power the future sqlite3 FTS index more than topics do.
Both lists must be kebab-case strings, no spaces, no special characters. Do not invent vague tags (interesting, useful); every entry should map to a concrete subject.
C.7. Auto-caption soft-correct policy
YouTube's auto-captioner produces transcription errors that propagate verbatim into the wiki entry under a strict "do not change words" rule. Examples: "kills for measurement" (meant "scales for measurement" — homophone misread). This breaks future full-text search ("scales" matches no results) and produces gibberish in the rendered prose.
The synthesizer is allowed — and required — to soft-correct these obvious mis-transcriptions when composing the body prose in Phase D.
Categories to correct:
- Homophones — kills↔scales, their↔there↔they're, write↔right, hear↔here, principle↔principal — when the intended word is unambiguous from the surrounding sentence.
- Garbled compound words — caption merges or splits words wrongly (e.g. "a head" → "ahead" in motion contexts; "every day" vs "everyday" per usage).
- Dropped articles — when the sentence is otherwise grammatical and a missing the/a/an is obvious.
Categories NOT to correct:
- Paraphrasing or summarizing — the discipline of source-faithfulness applies to what the presenter intended to say, not to "improving" their delivery. Do not condense filler words, repair sentence fragments, or smooth out mid-sentence corrections the presenter made themselves.
- Ambiguous cases — when you're not confident which word the presenter meant, leave the caption verbatim. Better to have one piece of garbled text than to invent the wrong word.
- Domain jargon you don't recognize — a word you find unfamiliar isn't necessarily a mis-transcription.
Logging corrections. For every correction applied, append an entry to the transcript_corrections frontmatter list:
transcript_corrections:
- original: "kills"
corrected: "scales"
timestamp: 320.5
- original: "their"
corrected: "there"
timestamp: 487.2
The timestamp is the transcript-snippet timestamp where the original word appears. Logging makes corrections auditable and lets a future linter spot systematic captioner failures across the corpus.
C.8. Output of Phase C
You now hold:
- A TL;DR string (validated against
source_description)
- A key-takeaways bullet list
- A references list (description-driven, filtered, with URLs)
- A commands-and-code block list (or empty)
- Populated
tags and topics arrays for the frontmatter
- A
transcript_corrections list of soft-corrects applied (so far — Phase D applies more during prose composition and appends to this list)
These are consumed by Phase D (output writing).
Phase D — Output writing
Assemble everything from Phases B and C, plus the keep-list from Phase A, into the Obsidian literature note and write it to the user's vault.
D.1. Resolve the entry path
D.1.a. Resolve <vault> if not supplied
The convention is that the user keeps Obsidian vaults under ~/ObsidianVaults/<vault-name>/. The vault that hosts this entry depends on the video's topic, which the user picks per-run.
If <vault> was supplied at invocation:
- If it's an absolute path, use it directly.
- If it's a bare name (no
/), resolve to ~/ObsidianVaults/<name>/.
If <vault> was not supplied:
- Recall the user's last picked vault from memory (search for a memory keyed under
youtube-synthesizer-last-vault or similar — repo memory keys use hyphenated kebab-case, no spaces). If found, ask the user to confirm — "last run wrote to <recalled vault>; same vault for this entry?" — and use that on a yes.
- If no recall (or the user said no),
ls ~/ObsidianVaults/ and present the list. Ask the user to pick one.
- If
~/ObsidianVaults/ doesn't exist or is empty, ask the user for an absolute vault path.
After the user picks, save the chosen vault to memory so the next run can recall and confirm rather than re-prompt.
D.1.b. Compose the entry directory
Given the resolved <vault>, metadata.channel, and metadata.source_title:
- Sanitize the title: lowercase → strip anything not in
[a-z0-9 ] (apostrophes vanish — produces thats not that-s; quotes, colons, em-dashes, ampersands all disappear) → collapse whitespace runs into single hyphens → trim leading/trailing hyphens → truncate at 80 characters.
- Sanitize the channel name with the same rule applied to
metadata.channel (e.g. "The Grainbound" → the-grainbound).
- Today's date in
YYYY-MM-DD format (this is ingested_date).
- Compose the entry directory:
<vault>/sources/videos/<sanitized_channel>/<ingested_date>-<sanitized_title>/
Example: ~/ObsidianVaults/Worldbuilding/sources/videos/the-grainbound/2026-04-27-the-ox-thats-breaking-your-fantasy-map/
The channel directory is created on-demand if it doesn't exist yet locally; the same convention must already exist on Dropbox before sync (see Phase D.6.a — sync_to_dropbox.sh refuses if the channel dir on the remote isn't there, so a typo'd channel name can't silently create a new dir on Dropbox).
D.2. Skip-or-overwrite check
If the entry directory already exists and the user did not pass --rerun:
- Print a clear message: "Entry already exists at
<path>. Pass --rerun to overwrite."
- Stop. Do not modify existing content.
If --rerun, remove the existing directory's contents before writing (preserve nothing — full regeneration).
D.3. Copy kept frames
Create the entry directory. For each entry in the keep-list (Phase A.8) in timestamp order, copy its frame_path to <entry_dir>/image-NN.png, where NN is a 2-digit zero-padded index starting at 01. Use 3 digits if the keep-list count exceeds 99.
Track the mapping keep_index → (timestamp, relative_filename, kind) for use in body composition.
D.4. Compose the body — chapter-level prose flow with inline images
The body is one continuous prose flow per chapter, with images embedded inline at their timestamps. Images are anonymous anchors inside the prose, not section dividers.
D.4.a. Decide structure
- Flat (no chapter sections) if any of:
metadata.duration_seconds <= 180 (≤ 3 min)metadata.chapter_markers is empty or null
- Chaptered otherwise — one
## <chapter title> section per entry in chapter_markers, in source order.
D.4.b. Snap chapter boundaries to sentence ends
Before concatenating per-chapter, adjust each non-final chapter's end_time to the nearest sentence-terminator-ending snippet within [end_time − 5, end_time + 15] of the metadata boundary. Chapter markers in YouTube metadata are timed to visual transitions, not sentence ends — using them strictly produces "...the political map draws itself. Chapter / two." mid-clause splits. The next chapter's start_time then equals the previous chapter's snapped end_time.
Snapping rule: pick the closest snippet whose text ends with ., !, or ? and whose timestamp lies in that window. If no such snippet exists in the window, leave the boundary at end_time.
This is also where the spoken "Chapter N." transition lines naturally land: with snapping, "Chapter 3." gets pulled into chapter 2's tail (since the boundary moves to just past it), so chapter 3 starts cleanly with its first content sentence.
D.4.c. Per-chapter (or whole-video, in flat mode) prose composition
For each chapter's snapped [start_time, end_time) span (or the full [0, duration) in flat mode):
- Concatenate all transcript snippets whose timestamp falls inside the span.
- Apply soft-corrects per Phase C.7 to the concatenated text. Append every correction made here to the
transcript_corrections frontmatter list.
- Reflow into paragraphs at sentence boundaries. Walk the corrected text and break a paragraph every ~3–6 sentences at the next sentence terminator (
. , ! , ? ) — choose the break point at a natural feeling pause rather than a fixed sentence count. Do not change words beyond the soft-corrects from step 2; do not paraphrase, summarize, or restructure.
- Embed kept frames inline. For every keep-list entry whose
timestamp falls inside this chapter's span, inject ![[image-NN.png]] (on its own line, surrounded by blank lines) at the nearest sentence boundary to the timestamp in the reflowed prose. Multiple images in close succession (e.g. an animated-build-step run) appear consecutively, separated only by whatever prose falls between their timestamps if any.
The result, per chapter:
## <chapter title verbatim from chapter_markers>
<reflowed paragraph 1>
<reflowed paragraph 2>
![[image-03.png]]
<reflowed paragraph 3>
![[image-04.png]]
![[image-05.png]]
<reflowed paragraph 4>
Chapter title rule: use the author's chapter titles verbatim, including placeholder titles like "Chapter 2," "Chapter 3," or numerically-prefixed titles like "1. Setup." The chapter structure is the author's deliberate framing of the video; do not synthesize "better" chapter titles from content. If chapter_markers is missing, fall back to flat mode.
Flat-mode rendering: same prose flow, no ## <chapter title> heading. Render the prose under a single ## Body heading after ## Key takeaways.
Gap handling (chaptered mode): if chapter_markers doesn't cover the full duration, render the gap-time transcript under an ## Uncategorized section after the last chapter, using the same reflow rules.
D.4.d. Top-level body skeleton
---
<frontmatter from Phase B / C, YAML>
---
# <metadata.source_title>
**Source:** [<metadata.source_url>](<metadata.source_url>) — <metadata.channel> — <duration formatted as MM:SS or HH:MM:SS>
## TL;DR
<TL;DR string from Phase C.1>
## Key takeaways
- <bullet 1>
- <bullet 2>
- ...
## <Chapter 1 title>
<reflowed prose with inline ![[image-NN.png]] embeds>
## <Chapter 2 title>
<reflowed prose with inline image embeds>
...
## References
<list from Phase C.4, or omit the section entirely if empty>
## Commands & Code
<consolidated list from Phase C.5, or omit the section entirely if empty>
In flat mode, replace the chapter sections with a single ## Body containing all the reflowed prose.
Notes:
- Image embeds use Obsidian's wikilink form
![[image-NN.png]] since the file is in the same per-note folder. This renders inline in Obsidian and remains a valid relative reference if the entry is moved.
- Times in the source line are formatted as
MM:SS for videos under an hour, HH:MM:SS otherwise.
- Images appear inline at their timestamps inside the chapter prose. They do not appear in the consolidated
## Commands & Code section — that section is text-only.
- Code blocks attributed to a specific timestamp may appear inline in the prose at that point (with a one-line lead-in) and are also collected in the
## Commands & Code section at the bottom. Duplication is intentional: inline gives narrative context, the bottom section is the user's quick-reference index.
D.5. Write the file
Write <entry_dir>/<sanitized-title>.md, where <sanitized-title> is the same sanitization applied to metadata.source_title as in D.1.b but without the date prefix (the directory carries the date already). For "The Ox That's Breaking Your Fantasy Map" in dir 2026-04-29-the-ox-thats-breaking-your-fantasy-map/, the file is the-ox-thats-breaking-your-fantasy-map.md.
After writing, verify the file is non-empty and that the YAML frontmatter parses cleanly (if YAML fails, you have a quoting bug in source_description or elsewhere — fix it before declaring success). The block-scalar | form on source_description handles most cases, but watch for unescaped backticks or trailing whitespace in the description text.
Print a clear success message with the absolute path to the .md file so the user knows where to open it.
D.6. Optional Dropbox sync via rclone
After D.5 writes the entry successfully, ask the user whether to push the new entry directory to Dropbox.
Skip this entire phase if --no-sync was passed at invocation.
D.6.a. NEVER call rclone directly — use scripts/sync_to_dropbox.sh
rclone sync is destructive: it deletes anything in the target that isn't in the source. A wrong target path could wipe arbitrary amounts of the user's Dropbox.
The synthesizer ships a wrapper script that is the only sanctioned way to invoke rclone from this skill:
<youtube-synthesizer scripts dir>/sync_to_dropbox.sh <absolute-entry-dir> [--dry-run]
The script enforces the convention in code:
- Source must resolve under
~/ObsidianVaults/<vault>/sources/videos/<entry-dir>/ with exactly that path shape; anything else is rejected before rclone runs.
- Target is computed by the script as
dropbox:ObsidianVaults/<vault>/sources/videos/<entry-dir>/; the agent does not get to specify it. Targets at the Dropbox root, the ObsidianVaults/ parent, the vault root, the sources/ dir, or the videos/ dir are explicitly refused.
- The destination vault dir (
dropbox:ObsidianVaults/<vault>/) must already exist on Dropbox before the sync runs, verified via rclone lsd. This catches the typo case where a misspelled vault name (woldbuilding instead of worldbuilding) would otherwise silently create a new dir on Dropbox and orphan the entry. Vault creation is intentionally a manual gesture: if the user really is bootstrapping a new vault, the error message tells them to run rclone mkdir dropbox:ObsidianVaults/<vault>/ once, then re-try the sync.
- Missing rclone or unconfigured
dropbox: remote → the script reports the issue and exits non-zero without invoking rclone.
The agent must not invoke rclone directly anywhere in this skill — there is no situation where calling rclone outside this script is correct. Users with a different vault layout or remote name should run rclone manually outside the skill rather than try to subvert the script.
D.6.b. The flow
- Print the planned source path and the target path the script will compute.
- Ask: "Sync this entry to Dropbox now?"
- On yes, run:
<youtube-synthesizer scripts dir>/sync_to_dropbox.sh <vault>/sources/videos/<entry-dir>
Block on completion; report success or the script's error message verbatim.
- On no, print "Skipped sync. Run later with: sync_to_dropbox.sh " so the user has the exact command if they change their mind.
D.7. Failure-mode degradations (current scope)
- Re-running on existing entry without
--rerun: print message, exit (D.2).
- Very short video (≤ 3 min) or no
chapter_markers: force flat structure (D.4.a).
- Live stream / unavailable / no transcript: handled in Phase A; Phase D is unreachable in those cases.
- rclone not installed or
dropbox: remote not configured: report the rclone error verbatim, leave the local entry intact, and suggest the user install/configure rclone or re-run with --no-sync.
Previewing an entry
Wiki entries use Obsidian's wikilink syntax (![[image-NN.png]]) which doesn't render in standard markdown viewers. The scripts/preview.py helper renders any entry to HTML and serves the entry directory over HTTP — useful on a headless box where you can't open Obsidian directly.
<youtube-synthesizer scripts dir>/preview.py <entry-dir> [--port 8765] [--bind 0.0.0.0]
Pass either an entry directory (containing exactly one *.md file plus image-NN.png siblings) or a .md file directly. The script writes a sibling index.html (kept under that name so the HTTP server's default route works) with wikilinks rewritten to <img> tags and YAML frontmatter shown as a collapsible block, then starts an HTTP server. Open http://<host>:<port>/ in a browser.
Use --no-serve to render the HTML and exit without starting the server. Use --bind 127.0.0.1 to restrict to localhost when working on a shared box.
The script is stdlib-only (no dependencies). It is generic over wiki entries — any future source-type skill that produces this same per-note folder structure can use it too.
Discipline: faithful capture, no editorializing
The skill's job is to deliver "here is what this video said and showed, structured and searchable" — not to weave the content into the user's mental model. That weaving is downstream, in the vault root where the user (and you, in other tasks) builds permanent notes on top of these literature notes.
Concretely: do not reframe content for any particular use case (worldbuilding, debugging, learning), do not add interpretive headers, do not editorialize the presenter's claims. Capture what was said and shown.
The agent's voice should not blend with the presenter's voice. The synthesizer-generated TL;DR and takeaways describe the video's claims — they should attribute claims to the video implicitly through the document's framing (an entry in sources/videos/ is by definition a record of what the source said) rather than asserting claims as undisputed facts.
The soft-correct policy (Phase C.7) is the one place the skill modifies words. It applies only to obvious auto-caption mis-transcriptions, never to paraphrasing or "improving" delivery. Every correction is logged in transcript_corrections for auditability.
Prerequisites
youtube-transcript skill installedyoutube-screenshotter skill installed (transitively requires uv and ffmpeg)- Network access to YouTube
- A target Obsidian vault path (writable) — used by Phase D. Convention:
~/ObsidianVaults/<vault-name>/.
rclone (optional, only if using Phase D.6 Dropbox sync) with a dropbox: remote configured. Install via the system package manager or https://rclone.org/install/. Configure with rclone config and pick "Dropbox" — the remote name dropbox is what the skill expects by default. Skip this dep entirely if you always invoke with --no-sync.
Failure modes
- No transcript available (no captions, foreign language) → error early with a clear message; stop
- Video unavailable (private, members-only, age-restricted, geo-blocked) → error early; stop
- Live streams → refuse for now (no fixed endpoint to sample over)
- Very short videos (≤ 3 min) → flat-mode rendering, no chapter sections
- Video has chapter markers but they don't cover the full duration → see Phase D.4.c gap-handling rule
