YouTube Video Transcription

Overview

Use yt-transcribe to get the actual spoken content from YouTube videos. Web search and fetch tools cannot access video content - they only see metadata.

When to Use

Use this skill when:

• User shares a YouTube URL and asks what it says/contains

• User wants information that likely exists in a video

• User asks "what does this video talk about?"

• You need to extract spoken content from YouTube

Do NOT use:

• For video metadata only (title, description) - web search is faster

• When user explicitly wants just the link, not content

Quick Reference

Flag Purpose

-q

Required for LLMs - clean stdout, no progress noise

-m tiny

Faster transcription (less accurate)

-m medium

More accurate (slower, larger model)

-o file

Save to file instead of stdout

-f srt/vtt

Include timestamps

Core Pattern

Standard usage for LLM consumption

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q

Faster but less accurate

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q -m tiny

With timestamps

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q -f srt

Always use -q flag - suppresses progress output, gives clean transcript to stdout.

Workflow

• User provides YouTube URL or asks about video content

• Run: yt-transcribe "URL" -q

• Read and summarize the transcript for the user

• Answer their specific question using the transcript content

Common Mistakes

Mistake Fix

Trying WebFetch on YouTube URLs YouTube blocks bots, use yt-transcribe

Forgetting -q flag Progress output pollutes response, always use -q

Web searching for "what does video say" Search finds metadata, not content - transcribe instead

Using without setup Run yt-transcribe --setup first if binaries missing (exit code 5)

Exit Codes

• 0

• Success

• 5

• Binary not found (run --setup )

• 3

• Network error

• 4

• Transcription error