# Youtube Transcript

> Tải transcript/phụ đề từ YouTube video qua yt-dlp và convert VTT sang plain text sạch.

- Skill: `hoangvantuan/youtube-transcript` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 3 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add hoangvantuan/youtube-transcript`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/hoangvantuan/youtube-transcript/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: hoangvantuan (https://skillmd.com/u/hoangvantuan)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/hoangvantuan/youtube-transcript

---


# YouTube Transcript Downloader

Download transcript from YouTube video, convert to clean plain text.

## Workflow

Follow this exact order. Stop and inform the user if any step fails.

### Step 1: Verify yt-dlp

```bash
command -v yt-dlp
```

If not found, install:

- macOS: `brew install yt-dlp`
- Linux: `sudo apt install -y yt-dlp`
- Fallback: `pip3 install yt-dlp`

If installation fails, tell the user to install manually.

### Step 2: Get video info and check subtitles

```bash
VIDEO_URL="THE_URL"
yt-dlp --print "%(title)s" "$VIDEO_URL"
yt-dlp --list-subs "$VIDEO_URL"
```

Note what's available: manual subtitles (higher quality) vs auto-generated.

### Step 3: Download subtitles

Try in order until one succeeds:

**Manual subtitles (best quality):**

```bash
yt-dlp --write-sub --skip-download --output "transcript_temp" "$VIDEO_URL"
```

**Auto-generated subtitles (fallback):**

```bash
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --skip-download --output "transcript_temp" "$VIDEO_URL"
```

Both produce a `.vtt` file.

If neither works, inform the user that video này không có phụ đề.

### Step 4: Convert VTT to plain text

Use the bundled conversion script to deduplicate and clean the VTT output:

```bash
VIDEO_TITLE=$(yt-dlp --print "%(title)s" "$VIDEO_URL" | tr '/' '_' | tr ':' '-' | tr '?' '' | tr '"' '')
VTT_FILE=$(ls transcript_temp*.vtt 2>/dev/null | head -n 1)

python3 skills/youtube-transcript/scripts/vtt-to-txt.py "$VTT_FILE" "${VIDEO_TITLE}.txt"
```

Then clean up the temporary VTT file:

```bash
rm "$VTT_FILE"
```

### Step 5: Confirm to user

Tell the user the file name and location. Offer to read/display the content if they want to review it.

## Why deduplication matters

YouTube auto-generated VTT files show captions progressively with overlapping timestamps, producing many duplicate lines. The conversion script uses a seen-set to preserve speaking order while removing duplicates.

## Language selection

By default yt-dlp downloads all available subtitle languages. To target a specific language:

```bash
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-langs vi --skip-download --output "transcript_temp" "$VIDEO_URL"
```

Common codes: `en` (English), `vi` (Vietnamese), `ja` (Japanese), `ko` (Korean).

## Error handling

Read `references/error-handling.md` for solutions to common issues (private videos, geo-blocking, SSL errors, missing subtitles).