Transcript

Documents

transcript

Transcript 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 the spoken content of a YouTube video is needed — even if not explicitly requested: pasted video links or IDs, requests to summarize, quote, transcribe, translate, fact-check, or extract anything from a video. Also use for research or learning when a video is the source. Not for uploads 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/transcript/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/transcript, 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.

Transcript

Fetch video transcripts 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=text&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 11-char video ID
`format`	no	`json`	`json`, `text`
`include_timestamp`	no	`true`	`true`, `false`
`send_metadata`	no	`false`	`true`, `false`

Accepts: full URLs (youtube.com/watch?v=ID), short URLs (youtu.be/ID), shorts (youtube.com/shorts/ID), or bare video IDs.

Default: Always use format=text&include_timestamp=true&send_metadata=true unless user specifies otherwise.

Response (format=json):

{
  "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": "Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up",
    "author_name": "Rick Astley",
    "author_url": "https://www.youtube.com/@RickAstley",
    "thumbnail_url": "https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dQw4w9WgXcQ/maxresdefault.jpg"
  }
}

Response (format=text):

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

Errors

Code	Meaning	Action
401	Bad API key	Check key or re-setup
402	No credits	Top up at transcriptapi.com/billing
403/1010	Cloudflare block	Add or fix User-Agent header
404	No transcript	Video may not have captions enabled
408	Timeout	Retry once after 2s
429	Rate limited	Wait and retry

Tips

For long videos, summarize key points first, offer full transcript on request.
Use format=json when you need precise timestamps for quoting specific moments.
Use include_timestamp=false for clean text suitable for translation or analysis.
1 credit per successful request. Errors don't cost credits.
Free tier: 100 credits, 300 req/min.