YouTube Video Summarizer

Summarize YouTube videos by extracting transcripts and providing intelligent summaries. Saves summaries to an Obsidian vault and opens a styled preview in the browser.

Prerequisites

The venv is already set up at ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv with youtube-transcript-api installed.

Workflow

Extract video ID from the URL (supports youtube.com/watch, youtu.be, shorts)
Fetch transcript using scripts/get_transcript.py
Summarize the transcript based on user request
Save & Preview using scripts/save_summary.py - saves to Obsidian vault and opens styled HTML in browser

Scripts

Get Transcript

# Activate venv and get plain text transcript
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

# Get timestamped transcript
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "URL" --format timestamped

# Specify language
source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/get_transcript.py "URL" --lang es

Save Summary & Open Preview

After generating the summary, save it and open the preview:

source ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/venv/bin/activate && python ~/.claude/skills/youtube-summarize/scripts/save_summary.py \
  --title "Video Title Here" \
  --url "https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID" \
  --summary "Your markdown summary here"

Options:

--no-preview: Skip opening browser preview
--no-save: Skip saving to Obsidian vault
--stdin: Read summary from stdin instead of --summary flag

Output Locations

Obsidian Vault: ~/Documents/YouTube-Summaries/ (customize in save_summary.py)
Browser Preview: Opens automatically in default browser (temp HTML file)

Summarization Guidelines

After extracting the transcript, provide summaries based on user needs:

| Request Type | Output | |-------------|--------| | "Summarize" | 3-5 paragraph overview of main points | | "Key points" | Bullet list of 5-10 main takeaways | | "TLDR" | 2-3 sentence ultra-brief summary | | "Explain" | Detailed explanation with context | | "Timestamps" | Key moments with timestamps |

Error Handling

| Error | Cause | Solution | |-------|-------|----------| | TranscriptsDisabled | Video has no captions | Inform user; cannot extract | | NoTranscriptFound | No transcript in requested language | Try without --lang flag | | VideoUnavailable | Private/deleted video | Inform user |

Notes

Works with auto-generated and manual captions
Supports 100+ languages (use ISO 639-1 codes)
Shorts and regular videos both supported
Summaries are saved with frontmatter for Obsidian compatibility