| name | youtube-content |
| description | Fetch YouTube video transcripts and transform them into structured content (chapters, summaries, threads, blog posts). Use when the user shares a YouTube URL or video link, asks to summarize a video, requests a transcript, or wants to extract and reformat content from any YouTube video.
|
YouTube Content Tool
Extract transcripts from YouTube videos and convert them into useful formats.
Setup
pip install youtube-transcript-api
Helper Script
SKILL_DIR is the directory containing this SKILL.md file. The script accepts any standard YouTube URL format, short links (youtu.be), shorts, embeds, live links, or a raw 11-character video ID.
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --text-only
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --timestamps
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --language tr,en
Output Formats
After fetching the transcript, format it based on what the user asks for:
- Chapters: Group by topic shifts, output timestamped chapter list
- Summary: Concise 5-10 sentence overview of the entire video
- Chapter summaries: Chapters with a short paragraph summary for each
- Thread: Twitter/X thread format — numbered posts, each under 280 chars
- Blog post: Full article with title, sections, and key takeaways
- Quotes: Notable quotes with timestamps
Example — Chapters Output
00:00 Introduction — host opens with the problem statement
03:45 Background — prior work and why existing solutions fall short
12:20 Core method — walkthrough of the proposed approach
24:10 Results — benchmark comparisons and key takeaways
31:55 Q&A — audience questions on scalability and next steps
Workflow
- Fetch the transcript using the helper script with
--text-only --timestamps.
- Validate: confirm the output is non-empty and in the expected language. If empty, retry without
--language to get any available transcript. If still empty, tell the user the video likely has transcripts disabled.
- Chunk if needed: if the transcript exceeds ~50K characters, split into overlapping chunks (~40K with 2K overlap) and summarize each chunk before merging.
- Transform into the requested output format. If the user did not specify a format, default to a summary.
- Verify: re-read the transformed output to check for coherence, correct timestamps, and completeness before presenting.
Error Handling
- Transcript disabled: tell the user; suggest they check if subtitles are available on the video page.
- Private/unavailable video: relay the error and ask the user to verify the URL.
- No matching language: retry without
--language to fetch any available transcript, then note the actual language to the user.
- Dependency missing: run
pip install youtube-transcript-api and retry.
