AugmentClaude
VideoResearch

YouTube Transcript Extractor

By feiskyer· feiskyer/codex-settings· 0

Extract and save timestamped transcripts from YouTube videos as text files.

Installation

  1. Make sure Claude is on your device and in your terminal.

    Skills load from ~/.claude/skills/ when Claude Code starts up — so you need it on your machine first. If you don't have it yet, install it once with the command below, then run claude in any terminal to verify.

    One-time setup
    npm i -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code

    Already have it? Skip ahead.

  2. Paste into Claude Code or into your terminal.
    Install
    Sign up to copy
    Sign up free to reveal

    This copies the whole skill folder into ~/.claude/skills/youtube-transcribe-skill-feiskyer/ — the SKILL.md plus any scripts, reference docs, or templates the skill ships with. Safe default: works for every skill.

    Faster alternative (instruction-only skills)

    Skips the clone and grabs only the SKILL.md file. Don't use this if the skill ships Python scripts, reference markdowns, or asset templates — they won't be downloaded and the skill will fail when it tries to load them.

    Quick install (SKILL.md only)
    Sign up to copy
    Sign up free to reveal
  3. Restart Claude Code.

    Quit and reopen Claude Code (or any other agent that loads from ~/.claude/skills/). New skills are picked up on startup.

  4. Just ask Claude.

    Skills auto-activate when your request matches the skill's description — no slash command needed. Trigger phrases live in the skill's own frontmatter; you can read them in the “What this skill does” section above.

Prefer to read the source first? Open on GitHub.

When Claude uses it

Use when you ask for YouTube subtitles, captions, or transcripts — extracts them from a YouTube URL and saves clean, timestamped text locally.

What this skill does

YouTube Transcript Extraction

Use the bundled scripts/transcribe_youtube.py wrapper for the primary workflow. It downloads subtitles with yt-dlp, selects the preferred language, converts WebVTT cues into timestamped plain text, and reports the output path and line count.

Requirements

  1. Install yt-dlp and confirm yt-dlp --version succeeds.
  2. Resolve the absolute directory containing this SKILL.md; refer to it as <skill-dir>.
  3. Keep the output in the user's current working directory unless they request another location.

The Python wrapper itself uses only the standard library. It can display --help without yt-dlp being installed.

Primary workflow

Run without browser cookies first:

python3 "<skill-dir>/scripts/transcribe_youtube.py" \
  "<youtube-url>" \
  --output-dir "$PWD"

The default language preference is Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, other Chinese variants, then English. Override it when the user requests another language:

python3 "<skill-dir>/scripts/transcribe_youtube.py" \
  "<youtube-url>" \
  --languages "ja.*,en.*" \
  --output-dir "$PWD"

The wrapper supports normal watch URLs plus youtu.be, Shorts, live, and embed URLs. A successful run writes one .txt file whose non-empty lines use this shape:

00:03 Subtitle text
00:08 Next subtitle text

Cookie retry

Do not read browser cookies by default. If the initial command fails specifically because the video requires sign-in, age verification, membership, or another authenticated session:

  1. Explain that the retry will let yt-dlp read YouTube cookies from a local browser profile.
  2. Ask the user which browser profile they approve using.
  3. Retry only after approval:
python3 "<skill-dir>/scripts/transcribe_youtube.py" \
  "<youtube-url>" \
  --cookies-from-browser chrome \
  --output-dir "$PWD"

Never print, copy, or persist browser cookies in the transcript or logs.

Browser fallback

Use browser automation only when yt-dlp is unavailable or cannot obtain subtitles and an appropriate browser-control capability is available.

  1. Inspect the tools available in the current session; do not assume fixed MCP server or tool names.
  2. Open the video, reveal the transcript panel, and extract visible timestamp/text pairs.
  3. Save the result as <sanitized-video-title>.txt in the requested directory.
  4. Close pages or sessions opened solely for this task.

If neither CLI extraction nor browser automation is available, report the missing capability instead of claiming success.

Completion report

Return:

  1. Absolute transcript path
  2. Selected subtitle language
  3. Number of transcript lines
  4. Whether browser cookies or browser automation were used

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