SkillsSKILLS
Productivity

youtube-transcript▌

intellectronica/agent-skills · updated Apr 8, 2026

$npx skills add https://github.com/intellectronica/agent-skills --skill youtube-transcript
summary

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos with optional timestamps.

  • ›Accepts multiple URL formats (youtube.com/watch?v=, youtu.be/, embed links, or raw video IDs) and outputs plain text or timestamped format
  • ›Fetches auto-generated or manually added captions, whichever is available; requires captions to be enabled on the video
  • ›Outputs to a file named VIDEO_ID-transcript.txt by default, or to a user-specified file path
  • ›When timestamps are omitted, reorganizes caption segments into comp
skill.md

YouTube Transcript

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos using the youtube-transcript-api.

Usage

Run the script with a YouTube URL or video ID:

uv run scripts/get_transcript.py "VIDEO_URL_OR_ID"

With timestamps:

uv run scripts/get_transcript.py "VIDEO_URL_OR_ID" --timestamps

Defaults

  • Without timestamps (default): Plain text, one line per caption segment
  • With timestamps: [MM:SS] text format (or [HH:MM:SS] for longer videos)

Supported URL Formats

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
  • https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
  • https://youtube.com/embed/VIDEO_ID
  • Raw video ID (11 characters)

Output

  • CRITICAL: YOU MUST NEVER MODIFY THE RETURNED TRANSCRIPT
  • If the transcript is without timestamps, you SHOULD clean it up so that it is arranged by complete paragraphs and the lines don't cut in the middle of sentences.
  • If you were asked to save the transcript to a specific file, save it to the requested file.
  • If no output file was specified, use the YouTube video ID with a -transcript.txt suffix.

Notes

  • Fetches auto-generated or manually added captions (whichever is available)
  • Requires the video to have captions enabled
  • Falls back to auto-generated captions if manual ones aren't available