Captions

Documents

captions

Captions is an Agent Skill for documents published in the ZeroPointRepo/youtube-skills repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Use when captions, subtitles, or the spoken text of a YouTube video is needed — even if not explicitly requested: pasted video links or IDs, requests to read, quote, or translate a video, accessibility needs, deaf/HoH use cases, content review, or language learning. Fetches timestamped caption data from any YouTube video. Not for uploading subtitles or account management.

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QUICK START

How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

Open your project in Codex.
Copy and paste the prompt below.
Review files and risks before approving any action.

Prompt to paste

Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/ZeroPointRepo/youtube-skills/blob/HEAD/skills/captions/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/captions, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Captions

Extract closed captions from YouTube videos via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow the instructions there to get and store the key.

Required Headers

Every request needs two headers:

Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: your agent's name and version if known (e.g. HermesAgent/0.11.0, ClaudeCode/1.0). Version is optional — agent name alone is fine. Do not omit this header or send a bare default — Cloudflare will return a 403 (error code 1010) and block the request.

GET /api/v2/youtube/transcript

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=json&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0"

Param	Required	Default	Values
`video_url`	yes	—	YouTube URL or video ID
`format`	no	`json`	`json` (structured), `text` (plain)
`include_timestamp`	no	`true`	`true`, `false`
`send_metadata`	no	`false`	`true`, `false`

Response (format=json — best for accessibility/timing):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": [
    { "text": "We're no strangers to love", "start": 18.0, "duration": 3.5 },
    { "text": "You know the rules and so do I", "start": 21.5, "duration": 2.8 }
  ],
  "metadata": { "title": "...", "author_name": "...", "thumbnail_url": "..." }
}

start: seconds from video start
duration: how long caption is displayed

Response (format=text — readable):

{
  "video_id": "dQw4w9WgXcQ",
  "language": "en",
  "transcript": "[00:00:18] We're no strangers to love\n[00:00:21] You know the rules..."
}

Tips

Use format=json for sync'd captions (accessibility tools, timing analysis).
Use format=text with include_timestamp=false for clean reading.
Auto-generated captions are available for most videos; manual CC is higher quality.

Errors

Code	Meaning	Action
401	Bad API key	Check key
402	No credits	transcriptapi.com/billing
403/1010	Cloudflare block	Add or fix User-Agent header
404	No captions	Video doesn't have CC enabled
408	Timeout	Retry once after 2s

1 credit per request. Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.