| name | watching-videos |
| version | 1.3.0rc2 |
| description | The user shared a video URL, a YouTube/TikTok/stream link, a local video file, a screen recording, a meeting recording, or a playlist/folder of videos — "watch this", "summarize this video", "what's in this recording". Use this to actually watch the video — download, extract frames, OCR, transcribe, and index it — instead of guessing from the title or asking the user to describe it. |
| license | MIT |
| user-invocable | true |
| allowed-tools | Bash, Read |
Watching videos
You don't have a video input; this skill gives you one. Anything a user
hands you — a YouTube link, a TikTok, a lecture, a meeting recording, a
screen capture, an .mp4 on disk — goes through the same pipeline: frames
(scene-aware, deduplicated), OCR, transcript (captions first, local
Whisper offline fallback), all persisted into one index.
Before watching: check the index
watch-skill list
If the video was already analyzed — this session or any earlier one —
do NOT watch it again. Ask it directly (see the asking-with-evidence
skill):
watch-skill ask <video_id> "<question>"
One video
watch-skill watch "<url-or-path>" [--start T --end T] [--max-frames N] [--transcript-only]
- Works on any yt-dlp-supported site (1800+), direct media URLs, HLS/DASH
manifests (
--duration 60 bounds live streams), and local files.
- Video over ~10 minutes and the user cares about one part → use
--start/--end for dense sampling of that window.
- User only needs what was said →
--transcript-only (fastest, often no
video download at all).
The report prints Indexed: <video_id>, frames with t=MM:SS
timestamps, OCR text, and the transcript. Read every frame path listed —
in a single message, parallel Read calls — then answer from frames + OCR
- transcript, citing timestamps.
Many videos (playlist, channel, folder)
watch-skill batch "<playlist-url-or-folder>" [--limit N]
Everything lands in the same index; one broken video never stops the
rest. Afterwards a single watch-skill search "<phrase>" spans the whole
batch.
First run on a machine
If any command fails with a dependency error, run watch-skill doctor
once — it installs missing ffmpeg/yt-dlp itself. No API key is required
for any of this; transcription is local by default and the video file
never leaves the machine.
