yt-digest

Extract summaries, transcripts, and key moments from YouTube videos.

3,891 stars

Complexity: easy

About this skill

yt-digest is a powerful AI agent skill designed to streamline the process of understanding YouTube video content. It offers capabilities to extract detailed information, including AI-generated summaries, complete transcripts with timestamps, and organized lists of key moments or chapters. This skill integrates seamlessly, allowing agents to process video content efficiently by transforming lengthy video content into digestible text formats. Its core functionality centers around providing various ways to interact with video content. Users can query for a quick summary to grasp the main points, retrieve a full transcript for in-depth analysis or quoting, or pinpoint specific sections via key moments. The added ability to convert summaries into audio provides an alternative consumption method, leveraging an external 'sag' skill. This skill is particularly useful for researchers, content creators, marketers, or anyone needing to quickly digest information from YouTube videos without watching them entirely. It enhances productivity by automating the extraction and organization of critical video data, making it readily available for further processing or review by the AI agent.

Best use case

The primary use case for yt-digest is to rapidly analyze and extract information from YouTube videos without requiring manual viewing. It greatly benefits researchers seeking data from video lectures or presentations, content creators wanting to repurpose video content or analyze competitor strategies, and students needing to quickly grasp the essence of educational videos. By automating content extraction, it saves significant time and allows for programmatic interaction with YouTube's vast video library.

Extract summaries, transcripts, and key moments from YouTube videos.

Users should expect structured text output containing summaries, transcripts, key moments, or a full analysis of a specified public YouTube video.

Practical example

Example input

yt-digest analyze "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

Example output

📺 Video: How to Build AI Agents
👤 Channel: TechChannel
⏱️ Duration: 15:32

## Summary
This video covers the basics of building AI agents...

## Key Moments
- 0:00 Introduction
- 2:30 Setting up the environment
- 5:45 Building the first agent
- 10:20 Advanced techniques
- 14:00 Conclusion

## Transcript (first 1000 chars)
...

When to use this skill

When you need a quick, AI-generated summary of a long YouTube video.
To obtain a full, timestamped transcript of a video for analysis or documentation.
To identify and list key topics or chapters within a YouTube video.
When integrating YouTube video content into reports, articles, or other automated workflows.

When not to use this skill

When the video content is private, restricted, or not publicly available for transcript extraction.
When the visual aspects or specific on-screen actions of a video are critical for understanding.
For very short videos where a quick manual watch is more efficient than running the skill.
If you require real-time analysis of live streams or non-YouTube video platforms.

Installation

Claude Code / Cursor / Codex

$curl -o ~/.claude/skills/yt-digest/SKILL.md --create-dirs "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/openclaw/skills/main/skills/0xraini/yt-digest/SKILL.md"

Manual Installation

Download SKILL.md from GitHub
Place it in .claude/skills/yt-digest/SKILL.md inside your project
Restart your AI agent — it will auto-discover the skill

How yt-digest Compares

Feature / Agent	yt-digest	Standard Approach
Platform Support	Not specified	Limited / Varies
Context Awareness	High	Baseline
Installation Complexity	easy	N/A

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this skill do?

Extract summaries, transcripts, and key moments from YouTube videos.

How difficult is it to install?

The installation complexity is rated as easy. You can find the installation instructions above.

Where can I find the source code?

You can find the source code on GitHub using the link provided at the top of the page.

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SKILL.md Source

# yt-digest

Extract summaries, transcripts, and key moments from YouTube videos.

## Features

- **Transcript extraction**: Get full transcript with timestamps
- **Summary**: AI-generated summary of video content
- **Key moments**: Extract chapters and highlights
- **Audio output**: Convert summary to audio (via sag skill)

## Usage

```bash
# Get transcript
yt-digest transcript "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

# Get summary
yt-digest summary "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

# Get key moments/chapters
yt-digest chapters "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

# Full analysis
yt-digest analyze "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."
```

## Output

```
📺 Video: How to Build AI Agents
👤 Channel: TechChannel
⏱️ Duration: 15:32

## Summary
This video covers the basics of building AI agents...

## Key Moments
- 0:00 Introduction
- 2:30 Setting up the environment
- 5:45 Building the first agent
- 10:20 Advanced techniques
- 14:00 Conclusion

## Transcript (first 1000 chars)
...
```

## Requirements

Uses YouTube's transcript API (no API key needed for public videos).

Data & Research