Subtitles

Pulls YouTube subtitles through TranscriptAPI so you can translate videos, follow along with foreign language content, or extract spoken text for accessibility. Free tier gives you 100 credits with no card required. The JSON format returns timestamped segments if you need sync, while text format strips timing for cleaner output. It's straightforward: pass a video URL or ID, set your format preference, and you get back the transcript. One gotcha: you must send a real User-Agent header or Cloudflare blocks the request with a 403. Useful if you're building language learning tools or just want to read a video instead of watching it.

skills.sh installs: 856
GitHub stars: 1.2K
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add zeropointrepo/youtube-skills --skill subtitles --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Subtitles

Fetch YouTube video subtitles via TranscriptAPI.com.

Setup

If $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY is not set, read references/auth-setup.md and follow the instructions there to get and store the key.

Required Headers

Every request needs two headers:

Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY
User-Agent: your agent's name and version if known (e.g. HermesAgent/0.11.0, ClaudeCode/1.0). Version is optional — agent name alone is fine. Do not omit this header or send a bare default — Cloudflare will return a 403 (error code 1010) and block the request.

GET /api/v2/youtube/transcript

curl -s "https://transcriptapi.com/api/v2/youtube/transcript\
?video_url=VIDEO_URL&format=text&include_timestamp=false&send_metadata=true" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $TRANSCRIPT_API_KEY" \
  -H "User-Agent: YourAgent/1.0"

SKILL.md on GitHub