Summarize YouTube videos by extracting and analyzing their transcripts. Use when a user shares a YouTube URL and asks to summarize, explain, analyze, or extract information from the video...
Summarize YouTube videos by extracting transcripts and providing intelligent summaries. Saves summaries to an Obsidian vault and opens a styled preview in the browser.
The venv is already set up at ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv with youtube-transcript-api installed.
scripts/get_transcript.pyscripts/save_summary.py - saves to Obsidian vault and opens styled HTML in browser# Activate venv and get plain text transcript
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"
# Get timestamped transcript
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "URL" --format timestamped
# Specify language
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "URL" --lang es
After generating the summary, save it and open the preview:
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/save_summary.py \
--title "Video Title Here" \
--url "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" \
--summary "Your markdown summary here"
Options:
--no-preview: Skip opening browser preview--no-save: Skip saving to Obsidian vault--stdin: Read summary from stdin instead of --summary flag~/Documents/YouTube-Summaries/ (customize in save_summary.py)After extracting the transcript, provide summaries based on user needs:
| Request Type | Output |
|---|---|
| "Summarize" | 3-5 paragraph overview of main points |
| "Key points" | Bullet list of 5-10 main takeaways |
| "TLDR" | 2-3 sentence ultra-brief summary |
| "Explain" | Detailed explanation with context |
| "Timestamps" | Key moments with timestamps |
| Error | Cause | Solution |
|---|---|---|
TranscriptsDisabled |
Video has no captions | Inform user; cannot extract |
NoTranscriptFound |
No transcript in requested language | Try without --lang flag |
VideoUnavailable |
Private/deleted video | Inform user |
