extract-y2b-insights

Extract YouTube Insights

Pull the highest-signal ideas out of a YouTube video — specifically the most controversial takes and the ones that read as genuinely new (ideas you would NOT easily find already discussed across the web). Output them two ways:

1. A clean .txt report saved to disk
2. The same content printed in the terminal

This is the text-only cousin of get-y2b-clips: it reuses that skill's transcript download + VTT parsing, but produces no video clips and no subtitles — just distilled insights.

When to Use This Skill

Activate when the user:

• Provides a YouTube URL and wants "insights", "key ideas", "hot takes", "takeaways"
• Wants the "most controversial" points, or "ideas that don't already exist" / "novel ideas"
• Wants a written summary of the thinking in a video, not clips of it

If the user wants video clips → use get-y2b-clips. If the user wants subtitles burned into a video → use add-subtitles.

Dependencies Check

command -v yt-dlp || echo "MISSING: yt-dlp"

yt-dlp is the only hard dependency (used to fetch the transcript). Install:

# macOS
brew install yt-dlp
# Linux / universal
pip3 install yt-dlp

ffmpeg is NOT required for this skill (no media is produced).

Input Requirements

• Required: YouTube URL
• Optional:
  • Number of insights (default: 5–8, scaled to video length)
  • Focus: lean more "controversial" vs more "novel" (default: both)
  • Whether to web-check novelty (default: yes, when WebSearch is available)
  • Output path (default: ./insights/<date>_<slug>/insights.txt)

Workflow

Phase 1: Setup

VIDEO_URL="USER_PROVIDED_URL"
VIDEO_TITLE=$(yt-dlp --print "%(title)s" "$VIDEO_URL")
CHANNEL=$(yt-dlp --print "%(channel)s" "$VIDEO_URL")
DURATION=$(yt-dlp --print "%(duration)s" "$VIDEO_URL")

TIMESTAMP=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S")
SLUG=$(echo "$VIDEO_TITLE" | tr '/:?*"<>|\\' '-' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]' | tr ' ' '-' | cut -c1-50)
OUT_DIR="./insights/${TIMESTAMP}_${SLUG}"
mkdir -p "$OUT_DIR"
echo "Video: $VIDEO_TITLE ($((DURATION / 60)) min)"
echo "Output: $OUT_DIR"