Youtube Transcripter

Youtube Transcripter

Overview

Extract a transcript from a YouTube URL and produce a concise, structured summary focused on key content, learnings, and actionable suggestions.

Workflow

1) Confirm input

• Require a YouTube URL or video ID. Multiple inputs are allowed.
• Assume no timestamps unless the user explicitly asks.
• Default language is auto-detected; ask only if a specific language is required.

2) First-time setup (one-time)

Make sure at least one transcript extractor is installed. Prefer yt-dlp:

choco install yt-dlp -y

If Chocolatey is not available or not elevated, use pip:

python -m pip install yt-dlp

Optional (API-based):

python -m pip install youtube-transcript-api

3) Extract transcript (best-effort with fallback)

Preferred: run the bundled script:

python scripts/get_transcript.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Multiple inputs (URLs or IDs) into a folder:

python scripts/get_transcript.py VIDEO_ID_1 "https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID_2" --out-dir transcripts

Notes:

• --out is only for single input.
• --out-dir writes transcript_<id>.txt for each input. Default is transcripts/.
• --wrap 125 reflows lines to 125 chars; use --wrap 0 to keep raw line breaks.

To force a language:

python scripts/get_transcript.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" --lang en --out transcript_VIDEO_ID.txt

Fallback order if the script fails:

1. Install yt-dlp (prefer Chocolatey if available)

Check:

choco -v

If Chocolatey is available, install (requires admin shell):

choco install yt-dlp -y

If Chocolatey is not available or not elevated, use pip:

python -m pip install yt-dlp

2. yt-dlp with auto captions (binary or Python module)

yt-dlp --skip-download --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en --sub-format vtt "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Then strip timestamps and cue markers from the .vtt file.

3. If tools are unavailable, ask the user for the transcript text or a downloaded caption file.

4) Capture metadata (title + channel)

If yt-dlp is available, fetch title and channel:

yt-dlp --print "%(title)s|%(channel)s|%(uploader)s" "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

PowerShell-safe quoting:

yt-dlp --print '%(title)s|%(channel)s|%(uploader)s' "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

If tools are unavailable, ask the user for the video title and channel name. If yt-dlp warns about missing JavaScript runtime, note that it may omit some fields; use channel if uploader is missing.

5) Summarize and structure notes

Always save the structured summary to a file for agent-friendly reading, e.g. transcript_summary.md in the working directory. Keep the raw transcript as transcript.txt. Always keep raw transcripts in transcripts/ and save summaries in the working directory. For multiple videos, include the YouTube ID in filenames: transcript_<id>.txt and transcript_summary_<id>.md. Write files as UTF-8 to preserve umlauts and other non-ASCII characters. Do not paste the full summary into chat; confirm file paths only.

Use this output template. Keep it tight and information-dense.

# Title
Channel: <channel name>
URL: <youtube url>
Video ID: <id>

## Summary
- 3-6 bullets capturing the core message

## Key Points
- ...

## Learnings
- ...

## Suggestions / Recommendations
- ...

## Action Items (optional)
- ...

## Open Questions (optional)
- ...

Quality checks

• Remove filler, intros, sponsor reads, and repeated segments.
• Preserve important claims, stats, or steps.
• If advice is speculative, label it as such.
• Keep language plain and direct.
• If you hit HTTP 429 (rate limit), wait and retry later or switch to a different network/IP; changing language rarely resolves rate limits.

Resources

scripts/

• scripts/get_transcript.py extracts transcripts for one or more URLs/IDs via youtube-transcript-api with yt-dlp binary or Python module fallback.