Youtube Summary

Summarize any YouTube video by dropping the link in chat. Supports custom prompts — paste the URL followed by your instructions (e.g. 'focus on the technical details'). Triggers on YouTube URLs.

YouTube Summary Skill

Summarize YouTube videos by extracting transcripts via TranscriptAPI.com and generating structured summaries.

Setup

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10+
• A TranscriptAPI.com account ($5/mo for 1,000 transcripts)
• Optional: pass (Unix password manager) for secure key storage

Installation

1. Sign up at transcriptapi.com and get your API key
2. Provide the API key via one of these methods:
   • Environment variable (simplest): export TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY="your-key-here"
   • pass password store (most secure): pass insert transcriptapi/api-key
3. Install Python dependencies:

   bash

   pip install -r skills/youtube-summary/requirements.txt
   

Detection

Trigger on messages containing YouTube URLs matching any of:

• youtube.com/watch?v=ID
• youtu.be/ID
• youtube.com/shorts/ID
• m.youtube.com/watch?v=ID
• youtube.com/live/ID

⚠️ Critical Rules

• NEVER use web_search as a fallback. If transcript extraction fails, report the error and stop.
• NEVER fabricate transcript content. Only summarize what the extraction script returns.
• Always run the extraction script. Do not skip it, even for well-known videos.

Workflow

Step 1: Extract transcript

If using pass:

bash

_yt_key_file=$(mktemp) && pass transcriptapi/api-key > "$_yt_key_file" && python3 skills/youtube-summary/scripts/extract.py "YOUTUBE_URL_OR_ID" --api-key-file "$_yt_key_file"; rm -f "$_yt_key_file"

If using env var:

bash

python3 skills/youtube-summary/scripts/extract.py "YOUTUBE_URL_OR_ID"

(Reads TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY from the environment automatically.)

Security note: The pass + temp file approach avoids exposing the key in ps output or shell history. The env var approach is simpler but the key is visible in the process environment.

Parse stdout:

• PROGRESS: lines → relay to user as status updates (optional)
• ERROR: lines → relay error to user, stop
• RESULT: line → parse the JSON after RESULT: — contains: header, transcript, language, tokens, title, channel, duration_str

Step 2: Summarize the transcript

Use the extracted transcript to generate a summary. The summary language must match the transcript language (from the language field).

If tokens < 50000 — single-pass: summarize the full transcript in one request.

If tokens ≥ 50000 — tell the user it's a long video and summarize the first ~40K tokens with a note that it was truncated.

Default summary format (use when no custom prompt given):

text

{header}

**TL;DR:** 2-3 sentence summary.

**Key Points:**
• Point one
• Point two
• (3-7 total)

**Notable Quotes:** (only if genuinely quotable lines exist)
> "Quote here"

Custom prompt — if the user included text alongside the URL, append it as additional instructions for the summary.

Step 3: Reply

• Keep output under 4000 characters for Telegram
• If the summary would exceed 4000 chars, send the TL;DR first, then the rest as a follow-up
• Always include the header line from the extraction result

Error Handling

• ERROR: API_ERROR: Invalid API key → "TranscriptAPI key is invalid. Check pass transcriptapi/api-key."
• ERROR: No transcript available → "This video doesn't have captions available."
• ERROR: Video not found → "Couldn't find that video — double-check the URL."
• Any other ERROR: → relay the message as-is. Do NOT fall back to web_search.

Why TranscriptAPI?

YouTube aggressively blocks datacenter/IPv6 ranges from accessing transcripts. Most cloud VPS (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, etc.) are blocked — direct transcript fetching fails for most videos when running from a server.

TranscriptAPI.com proxies requests through residential IPs, bypassing these blocks reliably. The $5/mo plan covers 1,000 transcript fetches.

💡 Tip: Add instructions after the URL to customize the summary (e.g. "focus on the technical details").