A versatile tool for downloading media and generating clean, paragraph-style transcripts from YouTube and other video platforms.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install video-transcript-downloader
2. Manual Installation
Copy the skill folder to one of these locations
~/.openclaw/skills/ <project>/skills/ Priority: Workspace > Local > Bundled
3. Prompt Installation
Copy this prompt to OpenClaw to install it automatically.
Help me install video-transcript-downloader using Clawhub. If Clawhub is not installed, install it first (npm i -g clawhub).
Prefer to download?
Get the raw skill files in a ZIP archive.
What is Video Transcript Downloader?
Video Transcript Downloader is a high-performance utility designed to streamline the extraction of content from the web. As part of the Openclaw Skills ecosystem, it leverages powerful libraries like yt-dlp and youtube-transcript-plus to provide users with clean, readable text transcripts or high-quality media files.
The skill excels at removing the noise from automated captions, turning fragmented timestamps into cohesive paragraphs suitable for documentation or AI processing. It also serves as a robust media downloader capable of handling complex format selections and remuxing requirements across hundreds of supported websites.
Video Transcript Downloader Use Cases
- Extracting clean, paragraph-formatted transcripts for AI summarization or research.
- Downloading high-quality video or audio files for offline reference and archiving.
- Converting video tutorials into text-based documentation without timestamp clutter.
- Managing complex media downloads that require specific format IDs or container remuxing.
How Video Transcript Downloader Works
- The user provides a URL and specifies the desired action, such as transcript extraction, audio ripping, or video download.
- For transcripts, the skill first attempts to fetch data via specialized YouTube APIs; if unavailable, it falls back to extracting subtitles via yt-dlp.
- The raw text is cleaned by stripping timestamps and bracketed cues (like [Music]) to produce a readable paragraph format.
- For media downloads, the skill interfaces with yt-dlp to identify available streams and downloads them to the specified local directory.
- Advanced users can pass raw yt-dlp arguments directly through the script for fine-grained control over the download process.
Video Transcript Downloader Setup
To integrate this tool into your Openclaw Skills workflow, ensure you have the necessary dependencies installed:
# Install Node.js dependencies
cd ~/Projects/agent-scripts/skills/video-transcript-downloader && npm ci
# Install system dependencies via Homebrew
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
Video Transcript Downloader Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill organizes downloaded content and text data according to the following structure:
| Output Type | Format | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Transcript | .txt / Stdout | Cleaned UTF-8 text in paragraph style by default. |
| Subtitles | .srt / .vtt | Original subtitle files in specified languages. |
| Media | .mp4 / .mp3 / .mkv | Downloaded video or audio files, optionally remuxed. |
| Metadata | JSON / CLI | Format IDs, resolution details, and container info via the formats command. |
Video Transcript Downloader Advanced Features
- Support for custom yt-dlp arguments passed via the -- flag for power users.
- Option to preserve bracketed cues like [Music] for accessibility-focused contexts.
- Multi-language support for both subtitle downloads and transcript extraction.
- Granular format selection, including specific resolution strings and container remuxing (e.g., MP4 without re-encoding).
- Automatic fallback mechanisms to ensure transcript availability even when native APIs fail.
SKILL.md
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