A high-performance command-line tool that automates YouTube video transcription using existing subtitles or OpenAI Whisper AI.
Install & Download
1. ClawHub CLI
The fastest way to install a skill directly from the registry.
npx clawhub@latest install youtube-transcriber
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 youtube-transcriber 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 YouTube Transcriber?
The YouTube Transcriber is a specialized automation tool designed to extract text from any YouTube video content, even when official subtitles are disabled or unavailable. As a versatile component of the Openclaw Skills ecosystem, it provides developers and researchers with a reliable way to convert video audio into searchable, actionable text transcripts.
This skill intelligently optimizes for both cost and speed. It first attempts to retrieve free, native YouTube captions. If those are missing, it automatically triggers a sophisticated fallback pipeline that downloads the audio, compresses it for efficiency, and processes it through the OpenAI Whisper API to ensure 99%+ accuracy across dozens of languages.
YouTube Transcriber Use Cases
- Transcribing YouTube videos where the creator has disabled closed captioning.
- Generating high-quality text archives for research, podcasts, and video tutorials.
- Translating or transcribing non-English content using AI-driven language hints.
- Automating content creation workflows by converting video scripts into text documents.
How YouTube Transcriber Works
- The skill accepts a YouTube URL and uses yt-dlp to check for existing subtitle tracks.
- If subtitles are found, they are extracted, cleaned of timestamps, and saved as a text file.
- If no subtitles are present, the skill downloads the audio track and uses ffmpeg to compress it into a mono format to meet API size constraints.
- The processed audio is sent to the OpenAI Whisper API for deep-learning-based transcription.
- The final transcript is generated and saved to the local file system for immediate use.
YouTube Transcriber Setup
To integrate this into your Openclaw Skills workflow, ensure you have the necessary system dependencies and environment variables configured.
# Install system dependencies
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
# Configure your OpenAI API Key
export OPENAI_API_KEY='your_api_key_here'
# Execute a basic transcription
./scripts/transcribe.sh "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=example"
YouTube Transcriber Data Schema & Taxonomy
The skill manages data through a streamlined file output and parameter system:
| Attribute | Description | Default Value |
|---|---|---|
| Output File | The location where the final .txt transcript is stored | /tmp/yt_transcript_ |
| Audio Cache | Intermediate audio files used for API processing | Deleted after use (unless --keep-audio is set) |
| Bitrate | Quality of compressed audio sent to API | 64 kbps |
| Language Code | ISO 639-1 code used to guide the Whisper engine | Auto-detect |
YouTube Transcriber Advanced Features
- Force Whisper Mode: Skip native subtitle checks to ensure 100% AI-generated accuracy.
- Multi-Language Support: Optimized for over 99 languages with manual language hinting.
- Bitrate Control: Adjust audio compression to handle videos up to 4 hours long without hitting API limits.
- Audio Retention: Capability to keep the downloaded audio file for further media processing within Openclaw Skills.
SKILL.md
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