YouTube Digest

---

name: youtube-digest

description: "Understand, summarize, translate, and extract key points from YouTube videos. Use when a user provides a YouTube URL and wants: (1) a Chinese summary, (2) a transcript or subtitle extraction, (3) translation of spoken content, (4) timestamps / chapter notes, (5) visual understanding via key frames, or (6) question answering about a video. Prefer this skill for transcript-first workflows."

---

# YouTube Digest

Use a transcript-first workflow.

Quick workflow

1. Run `scripts/fetch_youtube.py <url> --out <dir>` to collect metadata and subtitles.

If behind a proxy, add `--proxy <proxy-url>`.

2. If subtitles exist, read `summary.json` and the generated transcript file first.

3. If the user only wants a quick answer, summarize directly from the transcript.

4. If the user needs stronger visual grounding, extract key frames with ffmpeg after downloading the video or by using an existing local video file.

5. If no subtitles are available, report that transcript extraction needs `yt-dlp` + a speech-to-text path (for example Whisper) before promising a result.

Default behavior

- 3-line executive summary

- bullet timeline with timestamps

- key insights / actionable points

- open questions or uncertainties

Outputs

For normal requests, return:

Files produced by the script

The fetch script writes an output directory containing:

Read `summary.json` first to decide what to do next.

Required runtime tools

Key commands

Basic extraction:

python3 scripts/fetch_youtube.py "<youtube-url>" --out /tmp/youtube-digest

With proxy:

python3 scripts/fetch_youtube.py "<youtube-url>" --proxy http://your-proxy:port --out /tmp/youtube-digest

Prefer specific subtitle languages:

python3 scripts/fetch_youtube.py "<youtube-url>" --langs zh.*,en.* --out /tmp/youtube-digest

Failure handling

References