Saving a YouTube video with its transcript
Ask your AI to import a YouTube video into your Content collection — it saves the video, its full timestamped transcript, a short summary, and says honestly what it could not get.
Paste a YouTube link and ask your AI to import it — "save this video with the transcript", "add this talk to Content" — and it becomes one entry in your Content collection, ready to read, search and quote.
What you get
| On the entry | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Title, Source | the video's title and its clean link |
| Transcript | every caption line with a timestamp — [12:34] … — from start to finish, exactly as the captions say it |
| Summary | a short plain-language summary written from that transcript |
| Published at, Imported at | the day the video was published (kept as the channel published it) and the day you saved it |
| Language, Transcript source, Transcript coverage | which language the captions are in, whether they were written by the channel or generated automatically, and how much of the video they cover |
| Processing status | AI processed, AI processed (partial transcript), or Transcript unavailable |
| Channel | linked to your YouTube Channels entry when you already have one for that channel |
The checkbox on the entry is yours — your AI never ticks it. "AI processed" and "I have watched / reviewed this" are two different things.
Same video twice? One entry
Your AI checks the video's id before saving. Asking to import a video you already have returns the existing entry instead of making a second one.
What can go wrong — and what you will see
Your AI never invents transcript text. When something is missing it says so, on the entry and in the chat:
- No captions on the video — the entry is saved with the title, link and dates; Transcript stays empty, Processing status says Transcript unavailable, and Processing error says why.
- Automatic captions only — you still get the full transcript, marked as automatically generated. Automatic captions contain recognition mistakes, so double-check names and numbers before relying on them.
- Captions that cover only part of the video — the transcript is saved as far as it goes and marked partial.
- A video that needs sign-in, is private, removed, or region-locked — no transcript; the reason is recorded.
- Not a YouTube link — other video sites are not supported for transcripts yet. Use save this link to keep the bookmark, or attach a transcript file to an entry yourself (see Uploading files).
From your terminal or connected agent
The CLI and connected agents can import the same timestamped captions:
kzx call import_video_source --json '{"url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIDEO_ID","summarize":false}'
A connected agent needs kzx mcp --allow-writes to save the entry. The CLI fetches captions without calling an AI model; ask your connected agent to write a summary from the saved transcript. If you request a summary from the CLI alone, it saves the transcript and reports that no summarizer is available.
Tips
- Ask for a language: "import it with German captions" picks the German track when the channel published one.
- Want the transcript without a summary? Say so — "just the transcript".
- Long videos are fine: a two-hour podcast becomes a few thousand transcript lines on one entry. Open the property to read it in full; a table cell only shows a preview.