Youtube-skills transcript

Get transcripts from any YouTube video — for summarization, research, translation, quoting, or content analysis. Use when the user shares a video link or asks "what did they say", "get the transcript", "transcribe this video", "summarize this video", or wants to analyze spoken content.

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/ZeroPointRepo/youtube-skills

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/ZeroPointRepo/youtube-skills "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/skills/transcript" ~/.claude/skills/zeropointrepo-youtube-skills-transcript-7e47fd && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: skills/transcript/SKILL.md

source content

Transcript

Fetch video transcripts via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

$TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY

is not set, help the user create an account (100 free credits, no card):

Step 1 — Register: Ask user for their email.

node ./scripts/tapi-auth.js register --email USER_EMAIL

→ OTP sent to email. Ask user: "Check your email for a 6-digit verification code."

Step 2 — Verify: Once user provides the OTP:

node ./scripts/tapi-auth.js verify --token TOKEN_FROM_STEP_1 --otp CODE

API key saved to your shell profile and agent config. Ready to use.

Manual option: transcriptapi.com/signup → Dashboard → API Keys.

GET /api/v2/youtube/transcript

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY"

Param	Required	Default	Values
`video_url`	yes	—	YouTube URL or 11-char video ID
`format`	no	`json`	`json` , `text`
`include_timestamp`	no	`true`	`true` , `false`
`send_metadata`	no	`false`	`true` , `false`

Accepts: full URLs (

youtube.com/watch?v=ID

), short URLs (

youtu.be/ID

), shorts (

youtube.com/shorts/ID

), or bare video IDs.

Default: Always use

format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true

unless user specifies otherwise.

Response (

format=json

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 },
    { "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 21.5, "duration": 2.8 }
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "author_name": "Rick Astley",
    "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstley",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg"
  }
}

Response (

format=text

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "[00:00:18] We're no strangers to love\n[00:00:21] You know the rules...",
  "metadata": {...}
}

Errors

Code	Meaning	Action
401	Bad API key	Check key or re-setup
402	No credits	Top up at transcriptapi.com/billing
404	No transcript	Video may not have captions enabled
408	Timeout	Retry once after 2s
429	Rate limited	Wait and retry

Tips

For long videos, summarize key points first, offer full transcript on request.
Use
```
format=json
```
when you need precise timestamps for quoting specific moments.
Use
```
include_timestamp=false
```
for clean text suitable for translation or analysis.
1 credit per successful request. Errors don't cost credits.
Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.