| name | youtube-transcript |
| description | Fetch the transcript of any YouTube video as plain text. Use when user shares a YouTube URL and wants it summarised, analysed, quoted from, or processed in any way. Triggers on: "transcribe this", "get the transcript", "summarise this video", "what does this video say", any YouTube URL shared without further context.
|
youtube-transcript
Fetch YouTube transcripts as plain text via youtube-transcript-api (no install needed — uv handles it).
Usage
uv run --with youtube-transcript-api python3 -c "
from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi
api = YouTubeTranscriptApi()
transcript = api.fetch('VIDEO_ID')
text = ' '.join([t.text for t in transcript])
print(text)
"
Extract video ID from URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID or https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID.
With timestamps
uv run --with youtube-transcript-api python3 -c "
from youtube_transcript_api import YouTubeTranscriptApi
api = YouTubeTranscriptApi()
transcript = api.fetch('VIDEO_ID')
for t in transcript:
print(f'[{int(t.start//60)}:{int(t.start%60):02d}] {t.text}')
"
Notes
- Works on any video with auto-generated or manual captions
- Raises
TranscriptsDisabled if the video has no captions
- Raises
IpBlocked or PoTokenRequired if YouTube rate-limits — rare
- No API key needed
