Video Transcript Downloader

SkillFiles & storage

This skill lets your AI take a video link and pull its subtitles as clean, readable text, or download the video, audio, or subtitle files for you. It strips out timestamps and noise markers and formats the result into tidy paragraphs, so the text is ready to edit or repurpose.

Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.

After adding the skill, paste a video link into your chat and ask for a transcript, subtitles, or a download. For text you can work with right away, request the cleaned paragraph version.

Then ask your AI: use the Video Transcript Downloader skill

What your AI can do with it

  • Turn a video URL into a plain-text transcript
  • Extract subtitles from video websites
  • Download the video, audio, or subtitle files
  • Remove timestamps and noise markers from subtitles
  • Reformat subtitles into clean, paragraph-style text

What this skill tells your AI

The instructions your AI receives, as published by anbeime/skill in skills/video-transcript-downloader/video-transcript-downloader/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.

./scripts/vtd.js can:

  • Print a transcript as a clean paragraph (timestamps optional).
  • Download video/audio/subtitles.

Transcript behavior:

  • YouTube: fetch via youtube-transcript-plus when possible.
  • Otherwise: pull subtitles via yt-dlp, then clean into a paragraph.

Setup

cd ~/Projects/agent-scripts/skills/video-transcript-downloader && npm ci

Transcript (default: clean paragraph)

./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…'
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --lang en
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --timestamps
./scripts/vtd.js transcript --url 'https://…' --keep-brackets

Download video / audio / subtitles

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js audio --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads
./scripts/vtd.js subs --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads --lang en

Formats (list + choose)

List available formats (format ids, resolution, container, audio-only, etc):

./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…'

Download a specific format id (example):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --format 137+140

Prefer MP4 container without re-encoding (remux when possible):

./scripts/vtd.js download --url 'https://…' --output-dir ~/Downloads -- --remux-video mp4

Notes

  • Default transcript output is a single paragraph. Use --timestamps only when asked.
  • Bracketed cues like [Music] are stripped by default; keep them via --keep-brackets.
  • Pass extra yt-dlp args after -- for transcript fallback, download, audio, subs, formats.
./scripts/vtd.js formats --url 'https://…' -- -v

Troubleshooting (only when needed)

  • Missing yt-dlp / ffmpeg:
brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg
  • Verify:
yt-dlp --version
ffmpeg -version | head -n 1

Signals

GitHub stars
7k
Forks
628
Last commit
Sep 2026
Advanced
Catalog kind
skill
Gateway key
video-transcript-downloader
Source
github.com/anbeime/skill