Youtube Processing

YouTube Processing

Convert YouTube videos into a complete Obsidian note set under the Personal vault: transcript.md, English summary, Spanish summary, and a local thumbnail.

Scope And Output

• Use only for YouTube video URLs; do not use for articles, podcasts, generic webpages, or non-YouTube videos.
• Write only under the Personal Obsidian vault. Prefer $HOME-based paths: Linux $HOME/obsidian/Personal; macOS $HOME/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/Personal.
• Ask for the vault path if the Personal vault cannot be found.
• Store outputs at ./Youtube/{main_topic}/{video_folder_title}/.
• Required files: English summary, Spanish summary, transcript.md, and attachments/{safe_video_id}.jpg.

Ordered Workflow

Follow this order exactly:

1. Extract canonical video_id from the URL.
2. Search ./Youtube/**/*.md for an existing matching video_id.
3. Decide whether to reuse or refresh any existing transcript.md.
4. Download or read transcript.md.
5. Extract title, channel, duration, and upload date.
6. Download the best available thumbnail to local attachments/.
7. Choose main_topic, folder title, filenames, and English tags.
8. Create English and Spanish summary notes.
9. Verify folder structure, frontmatter, tags, local links, and Base compatibility.

Identity And Duplicate Rules

• Parse video_id from common URL forms, including watch?v=, youtu.be/, and Shorts URLs.
• Treat video_id as the canonical identity.
• Search before downloading anything: rg 'video_id:\s*"?{video_id}"?' ./Youtube -g '*.md'.
• Match quoted and unquoted video_id values.
• If a matching video folder has transcript.md, ask exactly one question with these choices:
  • Override transcript and reprocess everything.
  • Reuse existing transcript and regenerate summaries only.
• If a matching summary exists but no transcript exists, download the transcript and reuse the existing folder when practical.

Transcript And Thumbnail Rules

• Use yt-dlp or available YouTube transcript MCP/tooling for subtitle retrieval.
• If $HOME/youtube_cookies.txt exists, pass it to yt-dlp as --cookies "$HOME/youtube_cookies.txt".
• Prefer English subtitles when available; otherwise prefer the video's original-language subtitles before any translated subtitle track.
• Save transcript text exactly as returned; do not rewrite, summarize, or translate it.
• Filename must be exactly transcript.md.
• Include transcript frontmatter with at least video_id, channel, and original_video.
• Save one thumbnail as attachments/{safe_video_id}.jpg.
• Build safe_video_id by replacing invalid filename characters (: / \\ * ? " < > |) with -.
• Try thumbnail URLs in order: maxresdefault.jpg, hqdefault.jpg, mqdefault.jpg, default.jpg.
• Use only local thumbnail links in notes; never hotlink YouTube image URLs.

Folder, Filename, And Tag Rules

• Choose main_topic from the first meaningful non-system tag.
• Exclude youtube, en, and es when choosing main_topic.
• Normalize main_topic to a lowercase slug and replace / with -, such as ai/agents becoming ai-agents.
• Derive concise natural-language filenames from each summary's Brief Summary.
• Use spaces in filenames; do not use dash-separated slug filenames.
• Replace invalid macOS filename characters safely.
• Include at least five relevant English tags, including youtube.
• Do not include en or es tags.

Summary Contract

• Create exactly two summary notes per video, one English and one Spanish.
• Use language: "en" for the English note and language: "es" for the Spanish note.
• Add spanish_file: "{spanish_filename}.md" to the English note only.
• Make spanish_file exactly match the Spanish filename, including spaces, capitalization, accents if present, and .md.
• Keep thumbnail_file exactly attachments/{safe_video_id}.jpg.
• Translate directly with context awareness; do not use external translation tools.
• If the transcript is not English or Spanish, translate summaries into English, Spanish, or both as needed while keeping the transcript unchanged.
• Preserve technical terms, proper nouns, links, and code examples.
• Do not invent claims, examples, or conclusions not supported by the transcript.

Each summary must include frontmatter for original_video, channel, duration, upload_date, video_id, thumbnail_file, category, language, and tags. The English note also includes spanish_file.

Each summary body must include the local thumbnail image, ## Brief Summary, ## Key Points, and ## Comprehensive Summary with concept-focused section titles. Prioritize educational value for future study and keep key points to 15 bullets or fewer.

Completion Standard

Before reporting completion, verify: folder and required files exist; required frontmatter is present; upload_date uses YYYY-MM-DD when available; thumbnail_file and all thumbnail links are local; English spanish_file exactly matches the Spanish filename; Spanish note omits spanish_file; tags are English, include youtube, exclude en and es, and include at least five relevant tags; transcript is faithful; summaries are complete, language-specific, and transcript-grounded; duplicate detection happened before download; existing transcript flow asked whether to override or reuse; failures are reported clearly.