| name | summarize-youtube |
| description | High-quality YouTube transcription from audio using yt-dlp + whisper.cpp through the local summarize CLI. Use when captions are unavailable/untrusted or the user explicitly wants audio transcription. For summarize.sh markdownified YouTube transcripts, use the summarize skill instead. |
Summarize YouTube
Overview
Produce best-quality summaries from YouTube videos by transcribing audio with yt-dlp + whisper.cpp and summarizing with Claude CLI. This avoids caption-track errors and keeps the workflow reproducible.
Do not use this skill for tweet-style markdownified YouTube transcripts from caption tracks. Use the summarize skill and run summarize --extract --format md --markdown-mode llm ... for that path.
Quick Start
- Run the script with the video URL:
scripts/summarize_youtube.sh "<youtube-url>"
- The summary is printed to stdout. Redirect to a file if needed:
scripts/summarize_youtube.sh "<url>" > /tmp/summary.md
Workflow
- Confirm a whisper.cpp GGML model exists at:
~/.cache/whisper.cpp/ggml-medium.en.bin
- If missing, download it with:
nix shell nixpkgs#whisper-cpp --command whisper-cpp-download-ggml-model medium.en --output-dir ~/.cache/whisper.cpp
- Run
scripts/summarize_youtube.sh to transcribe via yt-dlp + whisper.cpp and summarize with Claude.
Options
--cli <provider>: claude (default), codex, gemini--length <preset>: short|medium|long|xl|xxl (default: xxl)--model <id>: whisper.cpp model id (default: medium.en)--timeout <duration> and --retries <count>: pass through to summarize--extract: transcript only (no LLM summary)
Script
scripts/summarize_youtube.sh is the canonical entry point. Prefer it over hand-crafted commands so the workflow stays consistent.
