YouTube Assistant

Fetch transcripts, metadata, and channel info from YouTube videos. Summarize content, extract key takeaways, compare multiple videos, and ask questions about video content — all from your terminal.

Powered by Evolink.ai

When to Use

• User says "watch this YouTube video", "summarize this video"
• User shares a YouTube URL and wants to understand the content
• User says "what are the key points in this video?"
• User wants to compare multiple videos or analyze a channel
• User asks a question about a YouTube video's content
• User says "get the transcript" or "video transcript"

Quick Start

1. Install yt-dlp

macOS: brew install yt-dlp

Windows / Linux: pip install yt-dlp

2. Set your EvoLink API key (for AI features)

export EVOLINK_API_KEY="your-key-here"

Get a free key: evolink.ai/signup

3. Use YouTube Assistant

Get video transcript:

bash scripts/youtube.sh transcript "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Get video metadata:

bash scripts/youtube.sh info "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

AI-summarize a video:

bash scripts/youtube.sh ai-summary "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID"

Capabilities

Core Operations

• Transcript — Download and clean video subtitles (auto or manual)
• Info — Fetch title, duration, views, upload date, description, tags
• Channel — List recent videos from a channel
• Search — Search YouTube for videos by keyword

AI Features (Optional)

Requires EVOLINK_API_KEY. Get one free

• ai-summary — Generate structured summary of video content
• ai-takeaways — Extract key takeaways and action items
• ai-compare — Compare content across multiple videos
• ai-ask — Ask questions about a video's content

Commands

Basic Operations

AI Operations

Example

User: "Summarize this video"

bash scripts/youtube.sh ai-summary "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ"

Output:

Video Summary: "Never Gonna Give You Up - Rick Astley"

Duration: 3:33 | Views: 1.5B | Published: 2009-10-25

Overview:

This is the official music video for Rick Astley's 1987 hit single...

Key Points:

• Classic 80s pop song that became an internet cultural phenomenon
• The "Rickroll" meme made it one of the most viewed videos on YouTube

Topics Covered:

1. Music performance and choreography
2. Internet culture and meme history

Configuration

Required binaries: python3, yt-dlp, curl

Security

Important: Data Consent for AI Features

AI commands (ai-summary, ai-takeaways, ai-compare, ai-ask) transmit video transcript text and metadata to api.evolink.ai for processing by Claude. By setting EVOLINK_API_KEY and using these commands, you explicitly consent to this transmission. Data is not stored after the response is returned. Core operations (transcript, info, channel, search) never transmit data to any third party.

Network Access

• youtube.com — Video transcript and metadata fetching via yt-dlp
• api.evolink.ai — AI features only (optional)

Persistence & Privilege

This skill creates temporary files for transcript processing which are cleaned up automatically. No credentials or persistent data are stored.

Links

• GitHub
• EvoLink API
• Community
• Support