YouTube Video Summarization Skill
SkillMediaDownloads YouTube subtitles and summarizes the video content using Gemini models while filtering out sponsor promotions. Use when the user asks to summarize, analyze, or get details from a YouTube URL.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.
Then ask your AI: use the YouTube Video Summarization Skill skill
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by hankunpeng/skills in skills/yt-summarize/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
This skill allows downloading subtitles of YouTube videos and summarizing their contents using Gemini models. It filters out sponsor promotions and can start an interactive chat session about the video.
Features
- Subtitles-based Summary: Summarizes YouTube videos by downloading their subtitles or auto-generated subtitles using
yt-dlp. No large video downloads are required. - Sponsor Filtering: Configured to ignore sponsor/promotional content in the summary.
- Interactive Chat: Allows starting a follow-up chat session to ask questions about the video.
- Multi-language Support: Can extract subtitles in specified languages.
Prerequisites
Ensure the following tools are installed on your system:
yt-dlp(e.g.brew install yt-dlp)python3httpx(pip3 install httpx)myopenai(a custom package/module present on your system)
Files Included
scripts/yt-summarize.py: The Python script that runsyt-dlpand calls the Gemini/LLM API.scripts/install.sh: Helper script to copyyt-summarize.pyto the app data directory, grant execution permissions, and set up a command alias.
Usage
Install or Update:
<skill_dir>/scripts/install.sh
Run from command line:
yt-summarize <youtube-url> [--lang <lang-code>] [--model <model-name>]
For example, to summarize a video:
yt-summarize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
To summarize with Chinese subtitles (if available):
yt-summarize https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ --lang zh-Hans
Troubleshooting
1. Zsh: no matches found
If you encounter zsh: no matches found: <url> error, it is because of the ? character in the YouTube URL. Wrap the URL in double quotes:
yt-summarize "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkac4WHC1o"
2. Bot verification issues
If you see Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot, pass browser cookies using the --ytdlp-arg flag. On macOS, Chrome cookies are recommended:
yt-summarize "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkac4WHC1o" --ytdlp-arg "--cookies-from-browser chrome"
(Note: Using --cookies-from-browser safari may fail due to macOS container sandbox permission issues.)
3. API Key Issues
If the API key is not detected (e.g. for Gemini), you can specify another provider (like deepseek or openai) and pass the corresponding key:
yt-summarize "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkac4WHC1o" --api deepseek
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 29
- Last commit
- Sep 2026
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
yt-summarize- Source
- github.com/hankunpeng/skills