Video Transcript

Extract full transcripts from video content for analysis, summarization, note-taking, or research. Use when the user wants a written version of video content, asks to "transcribe this", "get the text from this video", "convert video to text", or shares a video URL for content extraction.

Security Scan

The skill's requirements and instructions are internally consistent: it legitimately needs a TranscriptAPI key and includes a small Node CLI to obtain and save that key to the agent config; nothing requested looks disproportionate or unrelated to transcription.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description (video transcription) matches requested artifacts: node is required to run the provided auth script, TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is the service credential, and ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json is used to store the API key for agent runtime. No unrelated credentials, binaries, or services are requested.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md limits runtime actions to registering/verifying an account (email + OTP), saving the returned API key to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json, and calling transcriptapi.com endpoints via curl. File writes are documented and the script explicitly only updates the OpenClaw config and makes a backup. The instructions do not request unrelated system files or extra credentials.

Install Mechanism

There is no install spec (lowest-risk), but the package includes an executable Node script (scripts/tapi-auth.js) that the agent will run if used. The script performs network calls to transcriptapi.com and writes the API key to the OpenClaw config; there are no downloads from untrusted URLs or archive extraction.

Credentials

Only TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is required and is the primary credential used to access TranscriptAPI. The only config path requested is the agent config (~/.openclaw/openclaw.json) where the key is stored; this is proportionate for a service-client skill.

Persistence & Privilege

always is false and the skill does not request permanent platform-wide privileges. It writes its own entry into ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (backing up the existing file first) which is expected for storing an API key for future invocations; it does not modify other skills or global agent settings.

Assessment

This skill behaves as advertised: it needs your TranscriptAPI API key and provides a Node CLI to create an account and save the key to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (the file is backed up before changes). Before installing, verify you trust transcriptapi.com and are comfortable storing the API key in your OpenClaw agent config (any local process or other skills that can read that file could access the key). Ensure Node is installed for the auth script to run, and expect the usual data flow: email→OTP→server returns API key→key stored locally. If you prefer not to have the key written to disk, create the API key manually on transcriptapi.com and set TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY in your environment instead.

Extract transcripts from videos via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, help the user create an account (100 free credits, no card):

Step 1 — Register: Ask user for their email.

node ./scripts/tapi-auth.js register --email USER_EMAIL

→ OTP sent to email. Ask user: "Check your email for a 6-digit verification code."

Step 2 — Verify: Once user provides the OTP:

node ./scripts/tapi-auth.js verify --token TOKEN_FROM_STEP_1 --otp CODE

API key saved to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json. See File Writes below for details. Existing file is backed up before modification.

Manual option: transcriptapi.com/signup → Dashboard → API Keys.

File Writes

The verify and save-key commands save the API key to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json (sets skills.entries.transcriptapi.apiKey and enabled: true). Existing file is backed up to ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json.bak before modification.

To use the API key in terminal/CLI outside the agent, add to your shell profile manually: export TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY=<your-key>

GET /api/v2/youtube/transcript

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY"

Param	Required	Default	Values
video_url	yes	—	YouTube URL or 11-char video ID
format	no	json	json (structured), text (readable)
include_timestamp	no	true	true, false
send_metadata	no	false	true, false

Accepted URL formats:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID
• https://youtube.com/shorts/VIDEO_ID
• Bare video ID: dQw4w9WgXcQ

Response (format=text&send_metadata=true):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "[00:00:18] We're no strangers to love\n[00:00:21] You know the rules...",
  "metadata": {
    "title": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "author_name": "Rick Astley",
    "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstley",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg"
  }
}

Response (format=json):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 },
    { "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 21.5, "duration": 2.8 }
  ]
}

Tips

• Summarize long transcripts into key points first, offer full text on request.
• Use format=json when you need precise timestamps for quoting specific moments.
• Use send_metadata=true to get video title and channel for context.
• Works with YouTube Shorts too.

Errors

Code	Meaning	Action
401	Bad API key	Check key or re-setup
402	No credits	Top up at transcriptapi.com/billing
404	No transcript	Video may not have captions enabled
408	Timeout	Retry once after 2s

1 credit per successful request. Errors don't consume credits. Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.