YouTube Transcripts, Search, and Channel Data — Business

This skill provides access to YouTube transcripts, video search, channel browsing, playlist extraction, and new-upload monitoring via the TranscriptAPI service. It enables users to retrieve captions, search for videos, explore channels, and extract playlists, producing text transcripts and structured video metadata.

marketing claude-code

📂 View skill on GitHub ↗ 🚀 How to use

✨ What it does

Fetches video transcripts with optional timestamps and metadata.
Searches YouTube by query and returns video results.
Retrieves the latest 15 uploads from a channel with view counts and timestamps (free).
Lists all videos from a channel with pagination.
Searches within a specific channel by keyword.
Extracts video lists from playlists with pagination.

🎯 When to use it

When the user needs a transcript of a specific YouTube video or wants to summarize or quote from it.
When the user wants to search YouTube for videos on a topic and then fetch transcripts of the results.
When the user wants to browse a channel's latest uploads or search within a specific channel.
When the user wants to extract all video IDs from a playlist for further processing.
When the user wants to monitor a channel for new uploads.

🚀 How to use

Trigger the skill with requests like 'get the transcript for [URL]', 'search YouTube for [query]', 'what are the latest videos on [channel]', 'list this playlist [URL]', or 'monitor this channel [handle]'. Provide a YouTube URL, video ID, or @handle as input. The skill will call the appropriate TranscriptAPI endpoint, requiring the TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY environment variable to be set. Example prompts:

Get the transcript for https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abc123
Search YouTube for 'AI tutorials' and summarize the top 3 results.
What are the latest videos on @TechChannel?

📄 Output: The skill returns transcripts, search results, channel video lists, or playlist contents as structured data or text.

📦 Add this skill to Claude Code

# 1. Get the skills repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/alirezarezvani/claude-skills /tmp/claude-skills

# 2. Copy this skill into your project (or ~/.claude/skills for all projects)
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r /tmp/claude-skills/marketing-skill/skills/youtube-full .claude/skills/youtube-full

Skill source: marketing-skill/skills/youtube-full/SKILL.md

⚠️ Good to know

Requires captions on videos; private/age-restricted videos are inaccessible; live streams are unstable; TranscriptAPI is a commercial service with credit costs (free tier available).

❓ FAQ

What happens if a video has no captions?

The API returns a 404 error and zero credits are charged.

Is there a free way to get transcripts without an API key?

Yes, you can use the open-source youtube-transcript-api (Python) or yt-dlp as local alternatives, though they lack search and channel features.

How do I check for new uploads on a channel without spending credits?

Use the channel/latest endpoint, which is free and returns the 15 most recent uploads.

🤖 Overview, features, install steps and FAQ were generated from the project's SKILL.md on Sep 4, 2026. Always check the original source before running commands.