mcpbeat

Youtube

axoviq-ai/youtube

Extract transcripts from YouTube videos via the YouTube caption system

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
4
files
ships runnable scripts
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
856
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository 
npx skills add https://github.com/axoviq-ai/synthadoc --skill youtube

The instruction itself

5 sections, as written by the author

YouTube Skill

Extracts the transcript (captions) from a YouTube video using the YouTube

caption system — no API key or audio download required. Optionally uses a

vision-capable LLM to produce a structured summary (Overview, Topics,

Key takeaways) before the raw transcript.

Setup

pip install youtube-transcript-api

Standalone usage

Transcript only (no LLM required):

import asyncio
from synthadoc.skills.youtube.scripts.main import YoutubeSkill

skill = YoutubeSkill()          # no provider — returns raw timestamped transcript

async def main():
    result = await skill.extract("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ")
    print(result.text)          # "[0:00] text [0:04] text ..."
    print(result.metadata)      # {"video_id": "...", "title": "...", "url": "..."}

asyncio.run(main())

With LLM summarization (pass any provider that implements complete()):

skill = YoutubeSkill(provider=my_provider)
result = await skill.extract(url)
# result.text contains:
#   ## Executive Summary
#   <Overview / Topics / Key takeaways>
#
#   ## Transcript
#   [0:00] ...

The provider must implement:

async def complete(messages, system=None, temperature=0.0, max_tokens=4096)
    -> object with .text (str), .input_tokens (int), .output_tokens (int)

Message (used to build the messages list) is importable from

synthadoc.skills.base:

from synthadoc.skills.base import Message

When this skill is used

  • Source starts with https://www.youtube.com/, https://youtu.be/, or

https://www.youtubekids.com/

To search YouTube by topic instead of ingesting a specific URL, use the web

search skill — it filters Tavily results to YouTube domains automatically:

synthadoc ingest "youtube Moore's Law"
synthadoc ingest "youtube kids: Sesame Street"
synthadoc ingest "search for youtube: history of computing"

Limitations

  • Only works for videos that have captions (auto-generated or manually added).

If no captions are available the source is skipped with a warning.

  • Private or deleted videos are skipped gracefully.

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take axoviq-ai/youtube from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.

Install what it needs

The instructions reference pip. Without those the skill loads but fails at the first command.