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loganmancuso-scout
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youtube-transcript

Fetches YouTube video titles and English caption transcripts as JSON via yt-dlp.

Updated Aug 19, 2025
Search Tags:#transcript#video#subtitles#captions#youtube#yt-dlp#extraction
One-click install
npx skills add https://github.com/loganmancuso-scout/dotfiles --skill youtube-transcript-loganmancuso-scout
Or copy as Structured Prompt for Agent▼
Please help me install this Agent Skill.
Skill: youtube-transcript
Source: https://github.com/loganmancuso-scout/dotfiles/tree/main/dot_pi/agent/skills/youtube-transcript
Command: npx skills add https://github.com/loganmancuso-scout/dotfiles --skill youtube-transcript-loganmancuso-scout

SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION & REQUIREMENTS

💡 This Skill requires yt-dlp.

What problem does it solve? Getting the spoken content of a YouTube video normally requires watching it or manually copying captions. This Skill programmatically retrieves a video's title and full English transcript so you can analyze, summarize, quote, or search the content directly. ## Core Features & Use Cases - Transcript Extraction: Downloads English captions via yt-dlp, preferring manual subtitles and falling back to auto-generated ones. - Structured JSON Output: Returns the video title and full plain-text transcript (timing stripped) as a single JSON object on stdout. - Use Case: Given a YouTube lecture URL, fetch its transcript and feed the text into a summarization or quoting workflow without watching the video. ## Quick Start Fetch the transcript of this YouTube video and summarize its main points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example

Frequently Asked Questions about youtube-transcript

High-intent search queries and answers about installing and using this skill.

FAQPage Schema
How do I get a YouTube video transcript from the command line?▼

Run the fetch_transcript.py script with the video URL: it uses yt-dlp to download English captions and prints a JSON object containing the video title and full transcript text to stdout.

How to download YouTube subtitles with yt-dlp?▼

yt-dlp downloads subtitles with --write-subs for manual captions or --write-auto-subs for auto-generated ones, combined with --sub-langs and --sub-format. This script uses the json3 format and extracts plain text from it.

Does this work for non-English YouTube videos?▼

No, only English captions are attempted, in the order en, en-US, en-GB, then any en* variant. Videos without English captions cause the script to exit non-zero with an error message on stderr.

Why does transcript fetching fail for some YouTube videos?▼

Failures occur when the video has no English captions, captions are disabled, the URL is invalid, or a network error occurs. The script logs the reason to stderr and exits with a non-zero status.

Are the transcripts timestamped?▼

No, the transcript is plain text with all timing and formatting stripped, returned as a single string. Manual captions are preferred over auto-generated ones when both are available.

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