summarize
Summarize or extract text/transcripts from URLs, podcasts, and local files (great fallback for “transcribe this YouTube/video”).
Why use this skill?
Use the OpenClaw summarize skill to quickly extract text and generate concise summaries from local files, web articles, and YouTube videos using top-tier AI models.
Install via CLI (Recommended)
clawhub install openclaw/openclaw/skills/summarizeWhat This Skill Does
The summarize skill is a high-performance CLI tool integrated into the OpenClaw ecosystem designed to distill complex information from diverse sources into concise, actionable insights. Whether you are dealing with lengthy technical documentation on a remote URL, a deep-dive research paper in a local PDF, or a long-form YouTube video, this tool acts as your primary engine for content extraction and synthesis. By supporting multiple LLM backends—including models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI—it provides users with flexibility in both cost and performance, ensuring that summarization quality matches your specific analytical needs.
Installation
To integrate this utility into your workspace, run the following command in your terminal:
clawhub install openclaw/openclaw/skills/summarize
Once installed, ensure your environment variables are configured correctly. For optimal results, set your preferred API key (e.g., OPENAI_API_KEY or GEMINI_API_KEY). You may also optionally create a configuration file at ~/.summarize/config.json to define a global default model, ensuring that every time you trigger the command, it uses your preferred engine without manual flag specification.
Use Cases
This skill is perfect for busy professionals, developers, and researchers. Common use cases include:
- Rapid content filtering: Quickly scanning URLs to see if an article is worth a full read.
- Educational support: Extracting transcripts from educational YouTube videos to study key concepts.
- Document parsing: Summarizing local PDF or text files that are too dense for quick manual review.
- Technical troubleshooting: Using the
--extract-onlyflag to get raw data from web pages for ingestion into other pipelines.
Example Prompts
- "Summarize the article at https://example.com and give me the top three takeaways."
- "Can you transcribe this YouTube video at https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ? Just give me the text content."
- "Summarize the local file at /path/to/research_paper.pdf into a short, medium-length summary."
Tips & Limitations
To maximize efficiency, utilize the --length flag to control verbosity. If you are hitting API limits, consider using a lighter model like google/gemini-3-flash-preview. Note that for YouTube videos, the quality of transcripts depends on available metadata; if a video is extremely long, request a summary first to avoid output token limits. For websites with restrictive anti-scraping measures, ensure you have a FIRECRAWL_API_KEY set to enable the fallback extraction mode. Always check the output format using the --json flag if you intend to pipe this tool's output into other automated workflows.
Metadata
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Find the right skillPaste this into your clawhub.json to enable this plugin.
{
"plugins": {
"official-openclaw-summarize": {
"enabled": true,
"auto_update": true
}
}
}Tags(AI)
Flags: network-access, file-read, external-api
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