youtube-content

Files (3)

• SKILL.md
• output-formats.md · references/
• fetch_transcript.py · scripts/

SKILL.md (first lines)

# YouTube Content Tool

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos and convert them into useful formats.

## Setup

```bash
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.

```bash
# JSON output with metadata
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Plain text (good for piping into further processing)
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --text-only

# With timestamps
python3 SKILL_DIR/scripts/fetch_transcript.py "URL" --timestamps

# Specific language with fallback chain
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

1. **Fetch** the transcript using the helper script with `--text-only --timestamps`.
2. **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.
3. **Chunk if needed**: if the transcript exceeds ~50K characters, split into overlapping chunks (~40K with 2K overlap) and summarize each chunk before merging.
4. **Transform** into the requested output format. If the user did not specify a format, default to a summary.
5. **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.

From Martin-Hausleitner/martins-awesome-skills, MIT.

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