yt-transcript

A tool that fetches the subtitle transcript of a YouTube video from a URL or video ID and loads the text for further work. It can use a selected language, with English as the default.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to summarize videos, extract information, answer questions about their content, translate transcripts, or pass the text into another workflow.
Why use it?
It avoids copying or transcribing a video's spoken content by hand. The resulting plain text can be processed directly without creating a file.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/jaansokk/cursor_tools/yt-transcript
Any agent
npx skills add jaansokk/cursor_tools --skill yt-transcript
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/jaansokk/cursor_tools

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 104 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 615 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00104 $0.00615
Opus 5 $0.00052 $0.00308
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00123
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00061

Measured yesterday against content hash f5ca5394ae93, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

yt-transcript scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/yt_transcript.py), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.claude/skills/yt-transcript/SKILL.md · 60 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 60 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

YouTube Transcript Fetcher

Fetches the transcript of a YouTube video and loads the full text into your context so you can work with it immediately.

How it works

There's a Python script bundled with this skill that uses youtube-transcript-api to pull subtitles directly from YouTube — no browser or API key needed. It prints plain text to stdout. You capture that output and you're ready to go.

Prerequisites

The youtube-transcript-api package must be installed:

pip install youtube-transcript-api

Check first with pip show youtube-transcript-api to avoid reinstalling.

Usage

python /path/to/yt-transcript/scripts/yt_transcript.py "<youtube_url_or_video_id>" [lang]
  • First argument: any YouTube URL format (watch, shorts, embed, youtu.be) or a raw 11-character video ID
  • Second argument (optional): language code. Defaults to en. Use et for Estonian.

The script prints the full transcript as plain text to stdout. Capture it and work with it directly — no files are created.

Workflow

  1. User shares a YouTube link (or video ID)
  2. Ensure youtube-transcript-api is installed
  3. Run the script, capturing stdout
  4. The transcript is now in your context — proceed with whatever the user needs (summarize, answer questions, extract key points, feed into another skill, etc.)

Language handling

  • Default: English (en)
  • If the user asks for Estonian or the video is in Estonian, use et
  • The script prefers manual subtitles over auto-generated ones when available

Error handling

If the script fails (e.g., no transcript available, video is private, invalid URL), relay the error to the user clearly. Common issues:

  • "Could not extract a valid YouTube video ID" — the URL format wasn't recognized
  • Transcript not available — the video may not have subtitles, or they may be disabled
  • Network errors — check connectivity

Important notes

  • This skill is designed for Claude Code where the script runs on the user's machine with direct network access. It will not work in sandboxed environments that block youtube.com.
  • The transcript text can be long for lengthy videos. That's fine — just work with it in context.
  • Don't save transcript files unless the user explicitly asks for it.

Read the full file on GitHub · 60 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 60 lines · 104 tokens per session scan A f5ca5394ae93

Subscribe to this mod's changes

yt-transcript is a skill published in the GitHub repository jaansokk/cursor_tools (1 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 104 tokens to every session and 615 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.

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