yt-dlp-cli

yt-dlp-cli is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from tmchow/agent-skills. It costs 75 tokens per session (1,508 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

An agent workflow for downloading, extracting, clipping, subtitling, or archiving media from URLs supported by yt-dlp, a command-line media downloader.

In plain words
What is it for?
Saving requested video or audio, making clips, downloading subtitles, handling playlist ranges, and preparing files for later transcription or editing.
Why use it?
It checks that the requested files exist and match the job, while reporting blockers such as missing tools, required login, unclear rights, or service limits.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Good fit Saving requested video or audio, making clips, downloading subtitles, handling playlist ranges, and preparing files for later transcription or editing.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/tmchow/agent-skills/yt-dlp-cli
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.

Any agent
npx skills add tmchow/agent-skills --skill yt-dlp-cli
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/tmchow/agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for yt-dlp-cli

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmchow/agent-skills/yt-dlp-cli.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmchow/agent-skills/yt-dlp-cli)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/tmchow/agent-skills/yt-dlp-cli"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/tmchow/agent-skills/yt-dlp-cli.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 75 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,508 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 5.1 $0.00075 $0.01508
Opus 5 $0.00037 $0.00754
Sonnet 5 $0.00015 $0.00302
Haiku 4.5 $0.00007 $0.00151

Measured 8d ago against content hash fd7713319bcc, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

yt-dlp-cli 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 8d 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.

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.

yt-dlp-cli/SKILL.md · 132 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 132 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

yt-dlp-cli - agent workflow

Result: After a user asks to download, extract, clip, subtitle, or archive media from a yt-dlp-supported URL, the agent has either produced the correct file(s) on disk and reported path/size/identity, or stopped on an explicit blocker (missing binary, auth required, rights unclear, playlist too large, YouTube bot wall).

Next consumer: The user (file on disk) and any later skill that transcribes/edits that file.

Done: File exists at the stated path, matches the requested job (video vs audio vs clip vs playlist range), and the agent reported what it did and how it verified. Or a named blocker with the next safe action.

Intent (changes the approach): Agents can already invoke yt-dlp <url> and they do it badly. This skill exists to close those failure modes, not to teach the CLI. Do not write a flag encyclopedia. Do not hide yt-dlp behind a Python wrapper.

Autonomy envelope

Invoking this skill authorizes local inspection, downloading the requested streaming-site URL, writing the resulting file(s) under the chosen destination, and running required local ffmpeg postprocessing for the requested media shape. It does not authorize downloading an unbounded playlist/channel, reading browser cookies or auth files, bypassing unclear rights, or supplying user-only inputs. Stop for confirmation only when rights are unclear, scope expands to a full playlist/channel without an agreed range/archive, cookies/auth are needed, or the next input can only come from the user.

Quote every URL in shell commands. Treat a watch URL as one video unless the user explicitly asked for the playlist; keep --no-playlist on single-video jobs. Check ffmpeg -version before merged video/audio, audio extraction or conversion, subtitle embedding, clips, or SponsorBlock postprocessing; missing ffmpeg is a blocker for those shapes.

Default download

For a single requested video, run this command first:

yt-dlp --no-playlist -P "<dir>" -o "%(title).200B [%(id)s].%(ext)s" --merge-output-format mp4 --print after_move:filepath "<url>"

Read the full file on GitHub · 132 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files 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. 8d ago First seen · 132 lines · 75 tokens per session scan A fd7713319bcc

Subscribe to this mod's changes

yt-dlp-cli is a skill published in the GitHub repository tmchow/agent-skills (64 stars, last pushed 21d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 75 tokens to every session and 1,508 once invoked, about $0.0004 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 2026-08-30.

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