video-transcript-downloader

jMerta's avatarfrom jMerta

Download videos, audio, subtitles, and clean paragraph-style transcripts from YouTube and any other yt-dlp supported site. Use when asked to “download this video”, “save this clip”, “rip audio”, “get subtitles”, “get transcript”, or to troubleshoot yt-dlp/ffmpeg and formats/playlists.

⭐90stars🔀6forks📁View on GitHub🕐Updated Jan 2, 2026
[Web Automation]

When & Why to Use This Skill

The Video Transcript Downloader is a versatile Claude skill designed to automate the extraction of media and text from the web. By leveraging yt-dlp and specialized transcript engines, it enables users to download videos, high-quality audio, and subtitles from YouTube and thousands of other supported platforms. Its primary strength lies in generating clean, paragraph-style transcripts, removing the clutter of timestamps and technical metadata to provide readable content ready for analysis or repurposing.

Use Cases

  • Content Repurposing: Convert YouTube videos into clean text transcripts to quickly draft blog posts, newsletters, or social media updates.
  • Research & Fact-Checking: Extract precise transcripts from interviews, lectures, or news clips to perform deep text analysis and verify information.
  • Media Archiving: Download high-quality video or audio files for offline viewing, educational use, or long-term digital storage.
  • Accessibility & Translation: Retrieve subtitle files (.srt/VTT) to improve content accessibility or to serve as a foundation for multi-language translation projects.
  • Developer Workflow: Use as a CLI-integrated tool to troubleshoot media formats, list available stream qualities, and automate batch downloads via agentic workflows.
namevideo-transcript-downloader
descriptionDownload videos, audio, subtitles, and clean paragraph-style transcripts from YouTube and any other yt-dlp supported site. Use when asked to “download this video”, “save this clip”, “rip audio”, “get subtitles”, “get transcript”, or to troubleshoot yt-dlp/ffmpeg and formats/playlists.

Video Transcript Downloader

./scripts/vtd.js can:

  • Print a transcript as a clean paragraph (timestamps optional).
  • Download video/audio/subtitles.

Transcript behavior:

  • YouTube: fetch via youtube-transcript-plus when possible.
  • Otherwise: pull subtitles via yt-dlp, then clean into a paragraph.

Setup

cd "${CODEX_HOME:-~/.codex}/skills/video-transcript-downloader" && npm ci

Transcript (default: clean paragraph)

./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…'
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --lang en
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --timestamps
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --keep-brackets

Download video / audio / subtitles

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js audio --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js subs --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads --lang en

Formats (list + choose)

List available formats (format ids, resolution, container, audio-only, etc):

./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…'

Download a specific format id (example):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --format 137+140

Prefer MP4 container without re-encoding (remux when possible):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --remux-video mp4

Notes

  • Default transcript output is a single paragraph. Use --timestamps only when asked.
  • Bracketed cues like [Music] are stripped by default; keep them via --keep-brackets.
  • Pass extra yt-dlp args after -- for transcript fallback, download, audio, subs, formats.
./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…' -- -v

Troubleshooting (only when needed)

  • Missing yt-dlp / ffmpeg:
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
  • Verify:
yt-dlp --version
ffmpeg -version | head -n 1

Attribution

This skill was copied from steipete/agent-scripts. Upstream: https://github.com/steipete/agent-scripts License: MIT (see LICENSE)