YouTube Summary - Auto Video Summarizer

Automatically fetch YouTube video subtitles and generate concise summaries. Use when you need to summarize a YouTube video, get key points from a talk, or ex...

Security Scan

The skill's code and instructions match its stated purpose (fetch public YouTube subtitles and produce summaries); it doesn't request extra credentials or perform unexpected network calls beyond fetching transcripts.

Purpose & Capability

Name/description align with the code and SKILL.md: scripts/youtube_subtitles.py fetches transcripts via youtube-transcript-api and summarize.py prepares text for summarization. No unrelated binaries, credentials, or config paths are requested.

Instruction Scope

SKILL.md and the scripts stay within summarization scope (fetch subtitles, clean, chunk, format). Note: the workflow requires sending subtitle text to an AI model for summarization — users should be aware that the transcript text will be transmitted to whatever model/service the agent uses.

Install Mechanism

No formal install spec; there is a requirements.txt declaring youtube-transcript-api and SKILL.md suggests pip install. This is a low-risk, standard Python dependency but the skill will attempt to import and use that package at runtime.

Credentials

No environment variables, credentials, or config paths are required. The skill does not request unrelated secrets or cross-service keys.

Persistence & Privilege

always:false and user-invocable; the skill does not request persistent or elevated platform privileges and does not modify other skills or system settings.

Assessment

This skill appears to do what it says: fetch public YouTube captions and prepare them for AI summarization. Before installing, consider: (1) it needs network access to fetch captions (and will call the model service to summarize), so private or sensitive video content will be sent to those services; (2) the dependency is a standard Python package (youtube-transcript-api) — review and install it in a controlled/isolated Python environment; (3) the repository has no homepage and an unknown owner — if you require provenance, ask the publisher for a homepage or audit the code yourself; (4) if you have strict privacy/compliance needs, avoid sending transcripts to third-party models or run summarization in an environment you control.

YouTube Summary

Automatically get subtitles from any public YouTube video and generate a clean, structured summary with key points. Saves hours of watching long videos when you just need the main ideas.

Core Capabilities

1. Get full subtitles from any public YouTube video

• Works with videos that have auto-generated captions
• Supports multiple languages
• Outputs clean formatted text

2. Generate concise summaries

• Extracts all key points and main arguments
• Adjusts summary length based on your needs (short/medium/detailed)
• Structures output with bullet points for easy reading

3. Export results

• Save summary as markdown or text file
• Copy-paste ready for note-taking

Quick Start

Given a YouTube URL:

1. Extract video ID from the URL

   • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ → ID: dQw4w9WgXcQ
   • https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ → ID: dQw4w9WgXcQ

2. Fetch subtitles using the Python script:

   from scripts.youtube_subtitles import get_youtube_subtitles
   subtitles = get_youtube_subtitles(video_id)
   

3. Generate summary with the AI model using the subtitle text

4. Format and present the result with:

   • Video title and link
   • Executive summary (1-paragraph overview)
   • Key points (bulleted list)
   • Detailed notes (optional)

Usage Examples

Example request: "Summarize this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz"

Expected output:

# Video Summary: [Title]
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyz

## Executive Summary
One paragraph overview of the entire video's main message.

## Key Points
- Point 1: Main argument or finding
- Point 2: Second important topic
- Point 3: Key takeaway
- ...

## Detailed Notes (optional for longer videos)
More detailed breakdown...

Language Support

• The script automatically gets the available subtitle tracks
• Default to first available track (usually the video's original language)
• Can specify preferred language (e.g., "summarize in English" or "summarize in Chinese")

Scripts

scripts/youtube_subtitles.py

Python utility to fetch subtitles from YouTube using youtube-transcript-api.

Usage:

python scripts/youtube_subtitles.py <video-id> [language-code]

Requirements:

pip install youtube-transcript-api

scripts/summarize.py

Helper script to format subtitles for summarization.

When to use this skill

✅ Use when:

• You want the main ideas from a long YouTube video without watching
• You need to take notes from a lecture or talk
• You want to share key points from a video with others
• You're doing research and need to process multiple videos quickly

❌ Don't use when:

• The video is private and has no public captions
• The video has no captions/subtitles at all
• You need a full word-for-word transcription (this skill focuses on summarization)