Does this skill work if the video doesn't have captions?

Yes, it can fallback to downloading the audio and transcribing it using the OpenAI Whisper model with your permission.

What formats are the transcripts saved in?

It primarily saves to clean plain text (.txt) for easy reading, but can also provide the original VTT subtitle format which includes timestamps.

Do I need to install yt-dlp manually?

No, the skill checks for yt-dlp and can attempt to install it for you via Homebrew, apt, or pip depending on your operating system.

How does it handle duplicate lines in auto-captions?

It includes a Python-based post-processing step that automatically removes overlapping lines common in YouTube's auto-generated subtitle tracks.

Is Whisper transcription free to use?

Whisper is an open-source model; while the software is free, downloading the required models uses local disk space (1-3GB) and processing power.

YouTube Transcript Downloader

Name: YouTube Transcript Downloader
Author: kivilaid

bykivilaid

•

Web Scraping & Data Collection

Fetches and processes YouTube video transcripts, subtitles, and captions using automated tools and AI transcription.

This skill empowers Claude to extract text content from any YouTube video by leveraging yt-dlp for existing subtitles and OpenAI's Whisper for AI-powered audio transcription when captions are missing. It handles the end-to-end workflow—from installing dependencies and checking available subtitle tracks to deduplicating overlapping lines and converting complex VTT files into clean, readable plain text. Whether you need a quick summary of a tutorial or a full transcript for documentation, this skill automates the entire extraction and cleanup process.

Key Features

01Automatic download of manual and auto-generated YouTube subtitles

02AI-powered audio transcription using Whisper as a fallback

03Smart deduplication of overlapping lines in auto-generated captions

04Multi-format support including VTT and cleaned plain text (.txt)

05Automated dependency management and installation for yt-dlp and Whisper

066 GitHub stars

Use Cases

01Transcribing video content for blog posts, documentation, or study notes

02Extracting text from YouTube tutorials for quick reference without re-watching

03Analyzing video dialogue for sentiment, keywords, or content summaries

What are Skills?·How to Install

Install with 🐟 Skill.Fish

npx skillfish add kivilaid/plugin-marketplace youtube-transcript

For use in Claude.ai and ChatGPT

Download Skill