YouTube Transcript

Overview

Quick Start

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url>

python scripts/extract_transcript.py <youtube_url> custom_filename.md

Output Format

YAML Frontmatter

• title

  - Video title

• channel

  - Channel name

• url

  - YouTube URL

• upload_date

  - Upload date (YYYY-MM-DD)

• duration

  - Video duration (HH:MM:SS)

• description

  - Video description (truncated to 500 chars)

• tags

  - Array of video tags

• view_count

  - View count

• like_count

  - Like count

Body Structure

## Chapter Title

**00:05:23** Transcript text for this segment.

**00:05:45** Next segment text.

Workflow

1. Extract metadata and subtitles using yt-dlp
2. Parse VTT subtitle format to extract timestamps and text
3. Group transcript segments by video chapters (if present)
4. Format as Markdown with YAML frontmatter
5. Save to ~/Brains/brain/ with sanitized filename based on video title
6. Clean up temporary subtitle files

Deduplication

python scripts/deduplicate_transcript.py <markdown_file>

Requirements

pip install yt-dlp

Limitations

• Extracts subtitles in English first, falls back to Russian if English unavailable
• Requires video to have subtitles (auto-generated or manual)
• Does not download video or audio files
• Description truncated to 500 characters in frontmatter