Can I choose the transcript language?

By default, the skill attempts to retrieve Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English subtitles, prioritizing whichever is available.

Does this skill require external tools?

Yes, for the fastest results it uses yt-dlp. If yt-dlp is not installed, it requires the superpowers-chrome MCP plugin to perform browser-based extraction.

What file format are the transcripts saved in?

Transcripts are saved as .txt files in your current working directory, with each line containing a timestamp followed by the spoken text.

Is there a limit to video length?

There is no hard limit on video length, though very long transcripts may take longer to process and save to your local system.

How does it handle private or restricted videos?

The skill uses browser cookies or active browser sessions to authenticate, allowing it to extract transcripts from videos that might otherwise require a login.

YouTube Transcript Extractor

Name: YouTube Transcript Extractor
Author: tianzecn

bytianzecn

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Web Scraping & Data Collection

Extracts subtitles and transcripts from YouTube videos and saves them as local text files with timestamps.

About

The YouTube Transcript Extractor skill provides Claude with a robust workflow for retrieving text content from YouTube URLs. It employs a multi-layered strategy, first attempting high-speed extraction using command-line tools like yt-dlp with browser cookie support to bypass age or sign-in restrictions. If CLI tools are missing, the skill seamlessly falls back to advanced browser automation, navigating to the video page and scraping the transcript panel directly from the DOM. This ensures a high success rate for generating clean, timestamped text files suitable for research, summarization, or documentation tasks.

Key Features

Automatic cookie synchronization to bypass YouTube sign-in restrictions
Multi-language support for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English
Intelligent fallback mechanism to ensure successful transcript retrieval
Dual-mode extraction using yt-dlp or Chrome browser automation
Automatic file generation using the video title for organization
1 GitHub stars

Use Cases

Creating local searchable archives of video content for research and analysis
Generating written summaries or notes from long-form video lectures and tutorials
Translating or repurposing video dialogue into blog posts or documentation

About

Key Features

Automatic cookie synchronization to bypass YouTube sign-in restrictions
Multi-language support for Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and English
Intelligent fallback mechanism to ensure successful transcript retrieval
Dual-mode extraction using yt-dlp or Chrome browser automation
Automatic file generation using the video title for organization
1 GitHub stars

Use Cases

Creating local searchable archives of video content for research and analysis
Generating written summaries or notes from long-form video lectures and tutorials
Translating or repurposing video dialogue into blog posts or documentation