yt-summary

A Claude AI plugin that downloads YouTube video transcripts and generates well-structured markdown summaries with key insights, timestamps, and references.

Features

• Downloads transcripts using yt-dlp with automatic fallback strategies
• Extracts video metadata (title, channel, duration, upload date)
• Parses video descriptions for referenced links and resources
• Generates comprehensive markdown summaries with:
  • TL;DR executive summary
  • Key takeaways
  • Detailed section-by-section breakdown
  • Notable quotes with timestamps
  • Categorized references and resources
  • Collapsible full transcript

Requirements

Required:

• yt-dlp - YouTube video/audio downloader

Optional:

• openai-whisper - For audio transcription when subtitles are unavailable

Installation

1. Install Dependencies

# macOS
brew install yt-dlp

# All platforms
pip3 install yt-dlp

# Optional: Whisper for audio transcription
pip3 install openai-whisper

2. Install the Plugin

Add this plugin to your Claude Code configuration. The plugin will be available from the GitHub repository jpoley/yt-summary.

Usage

Download Transcript Only

/youtube:transcript https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

Output: ./yt-transcripts/VIDEO_TITLE.txt

Download and Summarize

/yt-summarize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID

Output: ./yt-transcripts/VIDEO_TITLE.summary.md

Both commands support standard YouTube URLs:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID
• https://youtu.be/VIDEO_ID

How It Works

Transcript Download Strategy

The transcript command attempts to fetch subtitles in priority order:

1. Manual subtitles - Highest quality, human-created
2. Auto-generated subtitles - YouTube's automatic captions
3. Whisper transcription - Last resort, requires user confirmation

Downloaded VTT files are processed to remove duplicates, clean HTML entities, and convert to plain text.

Summary Generation

The summarizer extracts metadata and generates a structured markdown document:

# Video Title

**Channel:** Channel Name | **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD | **Duration:** HH:MM:SS

## TL;DR
Brief 2-3 sentence executive summary.

## Key Takeaways
- Main insight 1
- Main insight 2
- ...

## Summary
Detailed breakdown organized by topic or timestamp.

## Notable Quotes
> "Exact quote from the video" - Speaker (timestamp)

## References & Resources
- [Resource Name](url) - Description

<details>
<summary>Full Transcript</summary>
Complete transcript text...
</details>

Output Directory

All output files are saved to ./yt-transcripts/ in the current working directory:

yt-transcripts/
├── Video Title.txt           # Raw transcript
└── Video_Title.summary.md    # Generated summary

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.