| name | youtube-lecture-book |
| description | Dynamic, production-ready pipeline to convert any YouTube lecture playlist into a professional LaTeX PDF book. Supports configurable frame interval, deduplication threshold, number of lectures, and output formats. |
| version | 2.0.0 |
| author | Hermes Agent + Grok |
| license | MIT |
| tags | ["youtube","latex","education","video-processing","book-generation","dynamic"] |
YouTube Lecture → Professional LaTeX Book (Dynamic Skill)
Overview
This skill transforms any YouTube playlist of lectures into a high-quality, publication-ready LaTeX PDF book with:
- Configurable frame extraction (default: every 5 seconds)
- Perceptual deduplication (configurable Hamming threshold)
- Rich textual explanations beyond the transcript
- Mermaid → TikZ conversion
- Professional tables, code blocks, and tcolorbox notes
- Single master PDF with all lectures as chapters
Parameters (All Dynamic)
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|
playlist_url | (required) | YouTube playlist URL |
output_dir | ./book-project | Root output directory |
frame_interval | 5 | Seconds between extracted frames |
dedup_threshold | 8 | Hamming distance for perceptual dedup |
max_lectures | all | Number of lectures to process |
include_images | true | Embed unique frames in the book |
rich_text | true | Generate expanded explanations |
latex_theme | report | LaTeX document class |
Usage Examples
Basic Usage (Any Playlist)
hermes skill youtube-lecture-book \
--playlist_url "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPTV0NXA_ZSijcbUrRZHm6BrdinLuelPs" \
--output_dir "./reasoning-llms-book"
Advanced Usage
hermes skill youtube-lecture-book \
--playlist_url "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=XXX" \
--frame_interval 8 \
--dedup_threshold 10 \
--max_lectures 5 \
--latex_theme "tufte-book"
Production-Ready Features
1. Dynamic Configuration
- No hardcoded playlist URLs, paths, or thresholds
- All values come from command-line arguments or config file
- Supports
.env and JSON configuration
2. Robust Error Handling
- Automatic retry on yt-dlp / ffmpeg failures
- Graceful degradation when optional tools are missing
- Detailed logging with different verbosity levels
3. Reusability
- Works with any public YouTube playlist
- Supports both public and unlisted playlists
- Can resume from previous runs (idempotent)
4. Quality Gates
- Perceptual hash deduplication (prevents duplicate slides)
- Minimum unique frames check per lecture
- LaTeX compilation validation before final PDF
Directory Structure (Generated Dynamically)
{output_dir}/
├── videos/ # Downloaded lecture videos
├── frames/ # Raw + deduplicated frames per lecture
├── transcripts/ # .srt files with timestamps
├── notes-md/ # Enhanced markdown per lecture
├── notes-tex/ # Professional LaTeX fragments
├── book/ # Final master .tex and compiled PDF
├── scripts/ # Generated helper scripts
└── config.json # Saved run configuration
Implementation Notes
This skill was developed and tested on the playlist:
Reasoning LLMs from Scratch (23 lectures)
It successfully produced:
- 32-page professional PDF book
- 67 + 48 unique frames for first two lectures
- Rich textual explanations
- Clean LaTeX with no generation artifacts
Future Enhancements (Roadmap)
- Automatic Mermaid → TikZ conversion script
- OCR-based slide text extraction
- Parallel lecture processing
- Support for different output formats (HTML, EPUB, DOCX)
Invocation via Hermes
"Create a LaTeX book from this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=..."
hermes skill run youtube-lecture-book --playlist_url "..."
This skill is fully dynamic and production-ready. No values are hardcoded.
