yt-transcribe

Use yt-transcribe to get the actual spoken content from YouTube videos. Web search and fetch tools cannot access video content - they only see metadata.

Use this skill when:

• User shares a YouTube URL and asks what it says/contains
• User wants information that likely exists in a video
• User asks "what does this video talk about?"
• You need to extract spoken content from YouTube

Do NOT use:

• For video metadata only (title, description) - web search is faster
• When user explicitly wants just the link, not content

| Flag | Purpose |

|------|---------|

| -q | Required for LLMs - clean stdout, no progress noise |

| -m tiny | Faster transcription (less accurate) |

| -m medium | More accurate (slower, larger model) |

| -o file | Save to file instead of stdout |

| -f srt/vtt | Include timestamps |

```bash

# Standard usage for LLM consumption

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q

# Faster but less accurate

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q -m tiny

# With timestamps

yt-transcribe "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" -q -f srt

```

Always use -q flag - suppresses progress output, gives clean transcript to stdout.

1. User provides YouTube URL or asks about video content
2. Run: yt-transcribe "URL" -q
3. Read and summarize the transcript for the user
4. Answer their specific question using the transcript content

| Mistake | Fix |

|---------|-----|

| Trying WebFetch on YouTube URLs | YouTube blocks bots, use yt-transcribe |

| Forgetting -q flag | Progress output pollutes response, always use -q |

| Web searching for "what does video say" | Search finds metadata, not content - transcribe instead |

| Using without setup | Run yt-transcribe --setup first if binaries missing (exit code 5) |

• 0 - Success
• 5 - Binary not found (run --setup)
• 3 - Network error
• 4 - Transcription error