Can I choose the transcription quality?

Yes, when using the Whisper fallback, the skill defaults to the 'base' model for a balance of speed and accuracy, but it can be configured to use other model sizes depending on your hardware.

How does it handle the messy formatting of auto-generated subtitles?

It includes a Python post-processing script that automatically removes VTT metadata and deduplicates lines that often repeat in YouTube's rolling caption format.

Does this skill work for videos without any captions?

Yes. If no subtitles are available on YouTube, the skill can download the video's audio and use the Whisper AI model to generate a new transcription locally.

What tools need to be installed for this to work?

The skill primarily uses yt-dlp for downloads and Whisper for transcription. It includes logic to check for these tools and can assist with their installation via Homebrew, apt, or pip.

YouTube Transcript Downloader

Name: YouTube Transcript Downloader
Author: lifangda

bylifangda

•

学习与文档

Automates the extraction, transcription, and cleaning of YouTube video subtitles and captions into readable text.

This skill empowers Claude to retrieve and process text content from YouTube videos using a multi-layered approach. It first attempts to download high-quality manual or auto-generated subtitles using yt-dlp. If no captions are available, it provides a sophisticated fallback that downloads the audio and utilizes OpenAI Whisper for local AI-powered transcription. The skill includes built-in post-processing to remove VTT formatting and deduplicate overlapping lines, resulting in clean, production-ready text files optimized for reading or analysis.

主要功能

01Automated download of manual and auto-generated YouTube subtitles

02Automatic dependency management for yt-dlp and Whisper installations

03Smart filename sanitization based on video titles

0416 GitHub stars

05Fallback AI transcription using Whisper for videos without native captions

06Intelligent text deduplication to clean up overlapping VTT lines

使用场景

01Converting video tutorials into written documentation or blog posts

02Summarizing educational videos, lectures, or conference talks

03Creating searchable text databases from video archives

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add lifangda/claude-plugins youtube-transcript

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill