| 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.
