YouTube Video Transcript

Most YouTube transcript tools either require paid APIs, use suspicious proxies, or just dump raw text without structure. This skill extracts transcripts locally using yt-dlp, preserves timestamps for navigation, detects chapters automatically, and exports to any format you need.

When to Use

User shares a YouTube link and wants to read instead of watch. User asks what someone says about a topic at a specific moment. User needs to extract quotes with timestamps for research or content creation. User wants to summarize a video or search within its content.

How It Works

         ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
         │           YOUTUBE TRANSCRIPT FLOW            │
         └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                              │
         ┌────────────────────┼────────────────────┐
         ▼                    ▼                    ▼
    ┌─────────┐         ┌──────────┐         ┌─────────┐
    │  VIDEO  │         │ METADATA │         │SUBTITLES│
    │   URL   │         │  FETCH   │         │  CHECK  │
    └────┬────┘         └────┬─────┘         └────┬────┘
         │                   │                    │
         │  youtube.com/     │  Title, duration,  │  Manual first,
         │  watch?v=...      │  chapters, lang    │  auto fallback
         │                   │                    │
         └───────────────────┴────────────────────┘
                              │
                              ▼
                    ┌─────────────────┐
                    │ EXTRACT + CLEAN │
                    │ VTT → Markdown  │
                    │ with timestamps │
                    └────────┬────────┘
                              │
              ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
              ▼               ▼               ▼
        ┌──────────┐   ┌───────────┐   ┌──────────┐
        │ CHAPTERS │   │  SEARCH   │   │  EXPORT  │
        │ detected │   │ by topic  │   │ MD/SRT/  │
        │ or smart │   │ timestamp │   │ TXT/JSON │
        └──────────┘   └───────────┘   └──────────┘

The Extraction Process

1. 📋 Get Metadata First

Always fetch video info before extracting subtitles:

yt-dlp -j "VIDEO_URL"

This gives you title, duration, official chapters, and available languages. Use it to confirm the right video and check what subtitles exist.

2. 📝 Prefer Manual Subtitles

Manual (uploaded) subtitles are higher quality than auto-generated:

# Try manual first
yt-dlp --write-sub --sub-lang en --skip-download "VIDEO_URL"

# Fall back to auto-generated if manual unavailable
yt-dlp --write-auto-sub --sub-lang en --skip-download "VIDEO_URL"

Auto-generated transcripts often have errors, missing punctuation, and wrong word boundaries. Manual subtitles are human-verified.

3. 🕐 Preserve Timestamps Always

Every segment must include timestamps. Format: [HH:MM:SS] or [MM:SS] for videos under 1 hour.