YouTube Full

Complete YouTube toolkit via TranscriptAPI. Transcripts, search, channels, and playlists in one skill — no yt-dlp, no headless browser, no binary to keep patched.

When to Use This Skill

• Someone pastes a YouTube link, video ID, or @handle and wants the content, not just the URL
• You need a transcript to summarize, quote, translate, or search within
• You're researching a topic where a talk, tutorial, or expert walkthrough will answer it better than a blog post
• You're tracking a channel for new uploads

What This Skill Does

1. Transcripts — full text with timestamps, one API call, 1 credit
2. Search — video or channel search across YouTube, 1 credit/page
3. Channel data — videos, in-channel search, latest uploads (the last one is free)
4. Playlists — bulk video extraction for courses and lecture series

How to Use

Basic Usage

Get the transcript for https://youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID and summarize it in 3 bullets.

Advanced Usage

Search TED for talks about complexity theory from the last two years, then pull transcripts for the top 3 and compare their arguments.

Example

User: "Has @NASA posted anything new this week?"

Output: Calls the free channel/latest endpoint, returns new uploads with title, publish date, and view count — no credits spent.

Setup

First run prompts for a TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY (or Claude can provision one automatically). Free tier: 100 credits, no card required.

Tips

• channel/latest and channel/resolve are free — use them for polling and handle lookups before spending a credit on anything else
• Failed or rate-limited calls don't cost credits
• Works the same on a laptop or a cloud server — TranscriptAPI handles the infrastructure YouTube blocks for direct scraping

Common Use Cases

• Daily digest of new uploads across tracked channels
• Turning a lecture playlist into study notes
• Competitive research across a channel's back catalog
• Content repurposing — video into blog post, thread, or newsletter