kb-yt-channel

name	kb-yt-channel
description	Creates and maintains Knowledge Base topics from YouTube channels by scaffolding a yt-channels topic, bulk-ingesting transcripts through kb ingest channel, and validating/indexing the result. Use when turning a YouTube channel into a Karpathy KB topic. Do not use for single-video ingestion, general video summaries, or non-YouTube sources.

KB YouTube Channel

This skill is a thin wrapper around the native kb ingest channel command. kb owns the ingest mechanics — channel resolution, video enumeration, resume/dedup, bounded concurrency, throttling, adaptive backoff, retries, native-language captions, and STT. The skill's scripts/ingest-channel.py owns the KB-side organization: scaffolding the topic under yt-channels/, maintaining category docs, patching CLAUDE.md, building wiki indexes, writing the run report, and validating the topic.

Required Inputs

• Channel or playlist URL, such as https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer.
• Topic slug, such as ai-dot-engineer.
• Topic title and domain.
• Video selection: either --limit N for the newest uploads or --all for the full uploads list.
• Transcript policy: --transcribe captions, auto, or stt.

Caption language defaults to the original-language track (--sub-langs orig) and is handled natively by kb ingest channel. Pass a comma list like --sub-langs pt,en only to override it.

Rate limits and large channels (read before --all or --limit > ~10)

YouTube throttles caption downloads per IP (HTTP 429). kb ingest channel already paces itself with bounded concurrency, inter-request throttling, and adaptive exponential backoff (configured via [youtube].bulk_concurrency, [youtube].bulk_throttle, [youtube].bulk_retries, [youtube].bulk_backoff_max). For anything beyond a handful of videos, also give kb better network identity via its config/env — not via this script:

1. Cookies — set YOUTUBE_COOKIES_FILE (or [youtube].cookies_file) to a logged-in YouTube session. Prefer a secondary Google account.
2. Impersonation — install curl_cffi into the yt-dlp environment so it can present a browser TLS fingerprint. Homebrew yt-dlp: /opt/homebrew/opt/yt-dlp/libexec/bin/python -m pip install curl_cffi.
3. Residential proxy — set YOUTUBE_PROXY to a rotating residential proxy (datacenter IPs are blocked). Pin to one country to avoid account-geo flags.
4. Pacing — raise --throttle (e.g. 5s) and/or keep --concurrency low (1) on a bare IP. --concurrency N (>1) is only safe behind a rotating proxy; respect the proxy plan's concurrent-connection cap.

See references/troubleshooting.md for details.

Procedure

Step 1: Confirm Prerequisites

1. Run kb version from the vault root.
2. Run yt-dlp --version from the vault root (kb shells out to it).
3. Run qmd --version when final indexing is required.
4. For channels beyond a handful of videos, configure cookies + proxy + curl_cffi per "Rate limits" above.
5. If --transcribe stt is selected, confirm ffmpeg -version and the configured STT provider credentials.

Step 2: Preview With --dry-run (recommended) Run the Step 3 command with --dry-run first to confirm the channel resolves and see how many videos will be ingested. This scaffolds the empty topic skeleton but ingests nothing.

Step 3: Run Channel Ingest

1. Read references/channel-topic-contract.md when topic metadata or output validation is unclear.
2. Execute python3 scripts/ingest-channel.py from this skill directory, passing:
   • --vault /path/to/vault
   • --channel-url
   • --topic-slug
   • --title
   • --domain <domain>
   • either --limit or --all
   • --transcribe captions|auto|stt
   • optionally --sub-langs to override the native original track
   • optionally --concurrency and/or --throttle to override the kb config defaults for large channels
   • optionally --no-index to defer indexing, --embed for vector embedding
3. Treat the script's JSON stdout as the run summary (it embeds the kb ingest channel summary plus validation and report path). kb's per-video progress and diagnostics stream live to stderr.

Example (small channel, defaults):

python3 .agents/skills/kb-yt-channel/scripts/ingest-channel.py --vault . --channel-url https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer --topic-slug ai-dot-engineer --title "AI Engineer Channel" --domain youtube-channel --limit 10 --transcribe captions

Example (large channel behind a residential proxy):

YOUTUBE_COOKIES_FILE=~/.config/kb/yt-cookies.txt YOUTUBE_PROXY="http://user-CC-rotate:[e-mail]:80" \
python3 .agents/skills/kb-yt-channel/scripts/ingest-channel.py --vault . --channel-url https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer --topic-slug ai-dot-engineer --title "AI Engineer Channel" --domain youtube-channel --all --transcribe captions --concurrency 3 --throttle 3s

Step 4: Verify The Topic

1. Confirm kb topic info yt-channels/ returns the expected topic path and source count.
2. Confirm /outputs/reports/ contains the channel ingest report for the run.
3. Confirm kb search "" --topic yt-channels/ --collection --lex --format json returns raw transcript or index content after indexing.
4. Leave wiki article compilation to the normal kb compile workflow unless the user explicitly asks for article synthesis.

Error Handling

• The script's JSON summary lists per-video results under ingested, skipped, and failures (each failure carries the kb error string). kb ingest channel already retries transient rate-limit/network errors with backoff before reporting a failure.
• If channel resolution fails, read references/troubleshooting.md and retry after updating yt-dlp or YouTube proxy/cookie settings.
• If many videos fail with rate-limit/network errors, raise --throttle, lower --concurrency, or fix cookies/proxy, then rerun. kb ingest channel skips videos already present in raw/youtube, so successful ingests are not repeated.
• If a failure is a genuine "no captions available" case, switch --transcribe to auto (captions then STT) or stt.
• If STT fails, read references/troubleshooting.md to check ffmpeg, provider credentials, model, chunk size, and network settings.
• If a partial topic exists after failure, rerun the same command. The script reuses the existing topic and kb skips videos already ingested. To re-fetch a specific video (e.g. to refresh a transcript), delete its file under raw/youtube/ and rerun.