youtube-transcribe-skill

1. Verify URL Format: Confirm the input is a valid YouTube URL (supports youtube.com/watch?v= or youtu.be/ formats).

1. Get Video Information:

- If yt-dlp is available, prefer yt-dlp --get-title "[VIDEO_URL]".

- If using browser automation, extract the title from the page (via snapshot or document.title) for file naming.

Use command-line tools to quickly extract subtitles.

1. Check Tool Availability:

Execute which yt-dlp.

- If yt-dlp is found, proceed to subtitle download.

- If yt-dlp is NOT found, skip immediately to Step 3.

1. Execute Subtitle Download (Only if yt-dlp is found):

- Tip: Always add --cookies-from-browser to avoid sign-in restrictions. Default to chrome.

- Retry Logic: If yt-dlp fails with a browser error (e.g., "Could not open Chrome"), ask the user to specify their available browser (e.g., firefox, safari, edge) and retry.

```bash

# Get the title first (try chrome first)

yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser=chrome --get-title "[VIDEO_URL]"

# Download subtitles

yt-dlp --cookies-from-browser=chrome --write-auto-sub --write-sub --sub-lang zh-Hans,zh-Hant,en --skip-download --output "

```

1. Verify Results:

- Check the command exit code.

- Exit code 0 (Success): Subtitles have been saved locally, task complete.

- Exit code non-0 (Failure):

- If error is related to browser/cookies, ask user for correct browser and retry Step 2.

- If other errors (e.g., video unavailable), proceed to Step 3.

When the CLI method fails or yt-dlp is missing, use browser UI automation to extract subtitles.

1. Check Tool Availability:

- Check if chrome-devtools-mcp tools (specifically mcp__chrome__new_page) are available.

- CRITICAL CHECK: If chrome-devtools-mcp is NOT available AND yt-dlp was NOT found in Step 2:

- STOP execution.

- Notify the User: "Unable to proceed. Please either install yt-dlp (for fast CLI extraction) OR configure chrome-devtools-mcp (for browser automation)."

1. Initialize Browser Session (If tools are available):

Call mcp__chrome__new_page to open the video URL.

3.2 Analyze Page State

Call mcp__chrome__take_snapshot to read the page accessibility tree.

3.3 Expand Video Description

_Reason: The "Show transcript" button is usually hidden within the collapsed description area._

1. Search the snapshot for a button labeled "...more", "...更多", or "Show more" (usually located in the description block below the video title).
2. Call mcp__chrome__click to click that button.

3.4 Open Transcript Panel

1. Call mcp__chrome__take_snapshot to get the updated UI snapshot.
2. Search for a button labeled "Show transcript", "显示转录稿", or "内容转文字".
3. Call mcp__chrome__click to click that button.

3.5 Extract Content via DOM

_Reason: Directly reading the accessibility tree for long lists is slow and consumes many tokens; DOM injection is more efficient._

Call mcp__chrome__evaluate_script to execute the following JavaScript:

```javascript

() => {

// Select all transcript segment containers

const segments = document.querySelectorAll("ytd-transcript-segment-renderer");

if (!segments.length) return "BUFFERING"; // Retry if empty

// Iterate and format as "timestamp text"

return Array.from(segments)

.map((seg) => {

const time = seg.querySelector(".segment-timestamp")?.innerText.trim();

const text = seg.querySelector(".segment-text")?.innerText.trim();

return ${time} ${text};

})

.join("\n");

};

```

If it returns "BUFFERING", wait a few seconds and retry.

3.6 Save and Cleanup

1. Use the Write tool to save the extracted text as a local file (e.g., ).
2. Call mcp__chrome__close_page to release resources.

• Save the subtitle file to the current working directory.
• Filename format:
• File content format: Each line should be Timestamp Subtitle Text.
• Report upon completion: File path, subtitle language, total number of lines.