YouTube Summary Skill

---

name: youtube-summary

version: "1.3.2"

author: giskard

description: "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."

tags: [youtube, video, summary, transcript]

license: MIT

homepage: https://github.com/chapati23

metadata:

openclaw:

emoji: "📺"

requires:

bins: [python3]

env: [TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY]

primaryEnv: TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY

---

# YouTube Summary Skill

Summarize YouTube videos by extracting transcripts via [TranscriptAPI.com](https://transcriptapi.com) and generating structured summaries.

Setup

Prerequisites

Installation

1. Sign up at [transcriptapi.com](https://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:

⚠️ Critical Rules

Workflow

Step 1: Extract transcript

**If using `pass`:**

_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:**

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:

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):

{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

Error Handling

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").