tube-summary

Search YouTube videos on any topic, extract English subtitles, and generate detailed summaries with key topics, quotes, and timestamps.

Security Scan

The skill's code and runtime instructions match its stated purpose (search YouTube, fetch subtitles, and summarize them) and request no credentials or elevated privileges.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description (search YouTube, extract subtitles, summarize) align with the included scripts: youtube-search.py finds videos (yt-dlp or web-scrape) and process-subtitles.py parses .vtt files and produces summaries. No unrelated binaries, env vars, or config paths are required.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md stays within expected scope (search → download subtitles with yt-dlp → process locally). Minor issues: the fallback web-scrape path imports BeautifulSoup (bs4) but bs4 is not listed in the Prerequisites; yt-dlp is required for both subtitle extraction and the primary search method. The scripts perform network requests to YouTube (expected) and write subtitle .vtt files to the working directory (documented).

Install Mechanism

No install specification is provided (instruction-only). That minimizes install-time risk. The skill relies on existing tools (yt-dlp, requests, bs4) rather than downloading arbitrary code at install time.

Credentials

The skill declares no environment variables or credentials and the code does not access secrets or external tokens. Requested capabilities (network access and ability to read local subtitle files) are proportional to the task.

Persistence & Privilege

The skill is not always-enabled and does not request persistent or system-wide modifications. It does not alter other skills' settings or require elevated privileges.

Assessment

This skill appears internally consistent and implements what it claims: it searches YouTube, uses yt-dlp (preferred) or web-scraping (fallback) to produce an English .vtt subtitle file, then summarizes it locally. Before installing/using: ensure you have yt-dlp and Python (and install requests and beautifulsoup4 if you plan to use the scraping fallback), be aware that the tool will make network requests to YouTube and will create .vtt files in the directory where you run it (it does not download video content by default). No credentials are requested. If you need stricter privacy, run this in a controlled environment since subtitle files can contain sensitive text from videos.

Search YouTube for videos on any topic, then extract and summarize their content using subtitles.

Quick Start

Step 1: Search for Videos

When asked about a topic, search YouTube and list the top 10 results:

python3 scripts/youtube-search.py "your search query"

This returns a numbered list of videos with titles, channels, and view counts.

Step 2: User Picks a Video

The user selects one video by number (e.g., "3" for the third video).

Step 3: Download Subtitles

Extract English subtitles from the selected video using yt-dlp:

yt-dlp --write-subs --sub-langs en --skip-download "VIDEO_URL"

This creates a .en.vtt subtitle file without downloading the video.

Step 4: Process & Summarize

Use the subtitle processor to analyze and summarize:

python3 scripts/process-subtitles.py "path/to/subtitle-file.vtt"

This generates:

• Key Topics: Main subjects covered in the video
• Summary: Concise 2-3 paragraph description of content
• Timestamps: Notable moments with context
• Key Quotes: Important statements from speakers

Workflow

1. Search → youtube-search.py "<topic>" → Display top 10 videos
2. User selects → e.g., "Video 5"
3. Extract URL → From the search results
4. Download subs → yt-dlp --write-subs --sub-langs en --skip-download "URL"
5. Process → process-subtitles.py "subtitle.vtt"
6. Present → Formatted summary with key points

Prerequisites

• yt-dlp (install: pip install yt-dlp)
• requests (for YouTube search fallback)
• Python 3.7+

Notes

• If YouTube search API is unavailable, the fallback uses web scraping via requests
• Subtitles may be auto-generated if not manually authored
• Some videos may not have English subtitles available
• The subtitle file is created in the same directory as yt-dlp is run

Example Usage

User: "Tell me about Rust programming language"

→ Search returns 10 videos about Rust

User: "Summarize video 3"

→ Downloads subtitles from video 3
→ Processes and returns detailed summary