| name | decisions-yt-dlp |
| description | Use yt-dlp for YouTube (and supported sites) metadata, subtitles, and search inside Decisions workflows — not for Bilibili (use bili-cli via agent-reach). |
Decisions yt-dlp
yt-dlp runs in the Decisions venv (pip install yt-dlp via bin/setup.py).
When to use
| Job | Tool |
|---|
| Video metadata / title / description | yt-dlp --dump-single-json |
| Subtitles / transcript for editing | yt-dlp --write-sub --skip-download |
| YouTube search (no API key) | ytsearch5:query |
| 30-day multi-source research | last30days (uses yt-dlp internally) |
| General social/web fetch | agent-reach |
| Cut/edit/remotion pipeline | video-editing, remotion-video-creation |
Workflow step (ytdlp action)
{"mode": "metadata", "url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"}
{"mode": "subtitles", "url": "...", "sub_lang": "en"}
{"mode": "search", "query": "LLM agents 2026", "limit": 5}
{"mode": "download", "urls": ["https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"], "title": "My clips"}
For downloads, use agent tool ytdlp_download or workflow download mode — opens Download Manager (/downloads/) with live progress.
Output is JSON in the step result (truncated to 2k chars). Attach full subtitle files from /tmp in agent steps when needed.
Agent CLI cheatsheet
yt-dlp --dump-single-json --no-download "URL"
yt-dlp --write-sub --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en --skip-download -o "/tmp/%(id)s" "URL"
yt-dlp --dump-single-json --flat-playlist "ytsearch5:your query"
Rules
- Do not use yt-dlp for Bilibili — blocked by site; use
bili search (agent-reach).
- Keep downloads under
/tmp unless the ticket asks to commit media.
- Upgrade if captions break:
pip install -U yt-dlp or brew upgrade yt-dlp.
- Cite
webpage_url and title in workflow evidence packets.
Reference source: ../reference/yt-dlp (upstream repo clone).
