dl-yt-video

name	dl-yt-video
description	Download YouTube videos with best quality video and audio using the dl-yt-video tool. Use when asked to download YouTube video, fetch video by ID, save video as mp4, or get high quality video from YouTube.

dl-yt-video Skill

This skill enables downloading YouTube videos with best quality video and audio using the dl-yt-video Python CLI tool.

When to Use This Skill

• User requests downloading a YouTube video
• User provides a YouTube video ID or URL
• User wants to save video in MP4 format with best quality
• User needs to download a video to a specific directory
• User wants to automatically create output directory if missing

Prerequisites

• Python 3.7+ installed
• yt-dlp installed (automatically via requirements.txt)
• ffmpeg installed (for merging video and audio streams)
• The dl-yt-video tool located at $AGENT_CWD/tools/dl-yt-video/

Installation

If the tool is not yet installed, run:

cd $AGENT_CWD/tools/dl-yt-video
pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

Basic Command

python $AGENT_CWD/tools/dl-yt-video/dl-yt-video.py <VIDEO_ID> <OUTPUT_DIR>

Arguments

• VIDEO_ID: The YouTube video ID (e.g., d3UTywBDSW4) from the video URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• OUTPUT_DIR: Directory where the downloaded video will be saved

Example

To download the video with ID d3UTywBDSW4 and save it to ~/videos:

python $AGENT_CWD/tools/dl-yt-video/dl-yt-video.py d3UTywBDSW4 ~/videos

Features

• Downloads best quality video and audio streams available
• Automatically merges streams into MP4 format
• Creates output directory if it doesn't exist
• Output filename is based on video title (sanitized for filesystem)
• Handles Unicode characters in video titles (encoding safe)
• Graceful error handling (invalid video ID, network issues, etc.)

Troubleshooting

• yt-dlp not found: Install with pip install yt-dlp
• ffmpeg not found: Install ffmpeg from https://ffmpeg.org/ (required for merging)
• Output directory cannot be created: Check permissions
• Video not found: Verify the video ID is correct and the video is publicly accessible
• Encoding errors: The tool uses safe printing to avoid Unicode encoding issues on Windows
• JavaScript runtime warning: yt-dlp may warn about missing JavaScript runtime; the tool will still work but some formats may be missing. Install Node.js or Deno to suppress warning.

Notes

• Downloaded videos are saved as <sanitized title>.mp4 in the output directory.
• The tool uses bestvideo[ext=mp4]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]/best[ext=mp4]/best format selection.
• If the video title contains characters invalid for filesystems, they are replaced with underscores.
• The tool first extracts video metadata to get the title, then downloads with sanitized filename.
• For testing, video ID d3UTywBDSW4 can be used (a public YouTube video).