watching-videos

Original：🇺🇸 English

Translated

The user shared a video URL, a YouTube/TikTok/stream link, a local video file, a screen recording, a meeting recording, or a playlist/folder of videos — "watch this", "summarize this video", "what's in this recording". Use this to actually watch the video — download, extract frames, OCR, transcribe, and index it — instead of guessing from the title or asking the user to describe it.

3installs

Sourceoxbshw/watch-skill

Added on2026-08-14

NPX Install

npx skill4agent add oxbshw/watch-skill watching-videos

SKILL.md Content

View Translation Comparison →

Watching videos

You don't have a video input; this skill gives you one. Anything a user hands you — a YouTube link, a TikTok, a lecture, a meeting recording, a screen capture, an .mp4 on disk — goes through the same pipeline: frames (scene-aware, deduplicated), OCR, transcript (captions first, local Whisper offline fallback), all persisted into one index.

Before watching: check the index

bash

watch-skill list

If the video was already analyzed — this session or any earlier one — do NOT watch it again. Ask it directly (see the

asking-with-evidence

skill):

bash

watch-skill ask <video_id> "<question>"

One video

bash

watch-skill watch "<url-or-path>" [--start T --end T] [--max-frames N] [--transcript-only]

Works on any yt-dlp-supported site (1800+), direct media URLs, HLS/DASH manifests (
```
--duration 60
```
bounds live streams), and local files.
Video over ~10 minutes and the user cares about one part → use
```
--start
```
/
```
--end
```
for dense sampling of that window.
User only needs what was said →
```
--transcript-only
```
(fastest, often no video download at all).

The report prints

Indexed: <video_id>

, frames with

t=MM:SS

timestamps, OCR text, and the transcript. Read every frame path listed — in a single message, parallel Read calls — then answer from frames + OCR

transcript, citing timestamps.

Many videos (playlist, channel, folder)

bash

watch-skill batch "<playlist-url-or-folder>" [--limit N]

Everything lands in the same index; one broken video never stops the rest. Afterwards a single

watch-skill search "<phrase>"

spans the whole batch.

First run on a machine

If any command fails with a dependency error, run

watch-skill doctor

once — it installs missing ffmpeg/yt-dlp itself. No API key is required for any of this; transcription is local by default and the video file never leaves the machine.

watching-videos

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content

Watching videos

Before watching: check the index

One video

Many videos (playlist, channel, folder)

First run on a machine