youtube-transcript

Name: youtube-transcript
Author: intellectronica

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 complete paragraphs to avoid mid-sentence line breaks

INSTALLATION

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

Run in your project or agent environment. Adjust flags if your CLI version differs.

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