youtube-playlist_skill

Overview

This skill browses YouTube playlists and fetches video transcripts using TranscriptAPI. It helps list playlist videos, paginate large playlists, and retrieve transcripts with timestamps and metadata for individual videos. Use it when you need a quick summary of playlist contents or full text of video speech for research, captioning, or archiving.

How this skill works

The skill calls TranscriptAPI endpoints to list up to 100 playlist videos per page and follows continuation tokens to paginate. For any selected video it requests transcripts (text, timestamps, metadata) using the video ID or URL. It can guide a user through API key setup, saving credentials to the local OpenClaw config and backing up previous files.

When to use it

• User shares a YouTube playlist link and asks “what's in this playlist?”
• You need a machine-readable list of videos with titles, durations, and channel info
• You want full transcripts or timestamped captions for videos in a playlist
• Archiving or backing up playlist content and transcripts
• Working with long playlists that require pagination and continuation tokens

Best practices

• Provide the playlist URL or playlist ID (accepted prefixes: PL, UU, LL, FL, OL)
• Request the first page, then use continuation tokens to fetch subsequent pages
• Keep TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY secret and store it in the shell or OpenClaw config
• Handle API errors: retry on timeout, check billing on 402, and verify playlist visibility on 404
• Limit transcript requests to needed videos to conserve credits (1 credit per playlist page)

Example use cases

• List all videos in a public playlist and export titles/durations for a catalog
• Fetch timestamped transcripts for selected lectures in a course playlist
• Archive a channel uploads playlist (UU prefix) including transcripts for search indexing
• Quickly summarize playlist contents for a content curation or research brief
• Automate caption extraction for accessibility review or translation workflows