youtube-transcript

A tool for downloading transcripts, captions, or subtitles from YouTube videos. It first looks for creator-provided subtitles, then considers automatically generated captions, with speech transcription as a final fallback.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when you have a YouTube link and need a transcript, captions, subtitles, or text for later analysis. It saves the downloaded transcript and can optionally clean up its formatting.
Why use it?
It gives you the video's spoken text without manually typing it or watching the whole video to capture every word. It checks which caption sources are actually available.

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/nicepkg/ai-workflow/youtube-transcript
Any agent
npx skills add nicepkg/ai-workflow --skill youtube-transcript
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/nicepkg/ai-workflow

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 48 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,316 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan B 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00048 $0.03316
Opus 5 $0.00024 $0.01658
Sonnet 5 $0.00010 $0.00663
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00332

Measured 2d ago against content hash 7c832ec57899, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade B, and why

youtube-transcript scanned grade B with 1 finding 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 2d ago.

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.

Asks for rootmediumPrivilege escalation

A mod that escalates privileges can change anything on the machine, not only the project.

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y yt-dlp
Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to youtube-transcript — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

workflows/content-creator-workflow/.claude/skills/youtube-transcript/SKILL.md · 416 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 416 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

YouTube Transcript Downloader

This skill helps download transcripts (subtitles/captions) from YouTube videos using yt-dlp.

When to Use This Skill

Activate this skill when the user:

  • Provides a YouTube URL and wants the transcript
  • Asks to "download transcript from YouTube"
  • Wants to "get captions" or "get subtitles" from a video
  • Asks to "transcribe a YouTube video"
  • Needs text content from a YouTube video

How It Works

Priority Order:

  1. Check if yt-dlp is installed - install if needed
  2. List available subtitles - see what's actually available
  3. Try manual subtitles first (--write-sub) - highest quality
  4. Fallback to auto-generated (--write-auto-sub) - usually available
  5. Last resort: Whisper transcription - if no subtitles exist (requires user confirmation)
  6. Confirm the download and show the user where the file is saved
  7. Optionally clean up the VTT format if the user wants plain text

Installation Check

IMPORTANT: Always check if yt-dlp is installed first:

which yt-dlp || command -v yt-dlp

If Not Installed

Attempt automatic installation based on the system:

macOS (Homebrew):

brew install yt-dlp

Linux (apt/Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt update && sudo apt install -y yt-dlp

Alternative (pip - works on all systems):

pip3 install yt-dlp
# or
python3 -m pip install yt-dlp

If installation fails: Inform the user they need to install yt-dlp manually and provide them with installation instructions from https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp#installation

Check Available Subtitles

ALWAYS do this first before attempting to download:

yt-dlp --list-subs "YOUTUBE_URL"

This shows what subtitle types are available without downloading anything. Look for:

  • Manual subtitles (better quality)
  • Auto-generated subtitles (usually available)
  • Available languages

Download Strategy

Option 1: Manual Subtitles (Preferred)

Try this first - highest quality, human-created:

Read the full file on GitHub · 416 lines

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. 2d ago First seen · 416 lines · 48 tokens per session scan B 7c832ec57899

Subscribe to this mod's changes

youtube-transcript is a skill published in the GitHub repository nicepkg/ai-workflow (282 stars, last pushed 7mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 48 tokens to every session and 3,316 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it B with 1 finding (asks for root). It is 100% identical to youtube-transcript, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.