youtube-transcript

name	youtube-transcript
description	Download YouTube transcripts using yt-dlp. Outputs markdown with timestamps (default) or VTT. Use when extracting subtitles/captions from YouTube for analysis or reference.

YouTube Transcript Downloader

Quick Start

# Download transcript (markdown with timestamps)
python scripts/download_transcript.py "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Output: VideoTitle.en.md

Options

Option	Default	Description
--lang LANG	en	Language code
--format {md,vtt}	md	Output format
--output-dir DIR	.	Output directory
--auto-only	-	Auto-generated subs only
--list	-	List available subtitles
--check-setup	-	Verify environment

Examples

# List available subtitles
python scripts/download_transcript.py "URL" --list

# Download VTT format
python scripts/download_transcript.py "URL" --format vtt

# Spanish transcript to specific folder
python scripts/download_transcript.py "URL" --lang es --output-dir ./transcripts

Output Formats

Markdown (default):

# Transcript

**[00:00:00]** Hello everyone and welcome back.

**[00:00:03]** Today we'll be discussing...

VTT:

WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.500
Hello everyone and welcome back.

Setup

# Check environment
python scripts/download_transcript.py --check-setup

# Install yt-dlp
brew install yt-dlp    # macOS
pip install yt-dlp     # in venv