tldw - too long; didn't watch

Transform YouTube videos and playlists into concise summaries using AI. Works with existing captions (free) or Whisper transcription (paid). Includes MCP server for Claude and other AI assistants and CLI.

Installation

brew install rtzll/tap/tldw
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key-here"  # optional: for AI summaries & Whisper

MCP

tldw mcp provides AI assistants with:

• get_youtube_metadata: Video or playlist metadata and captions status
• get_youtube_transcript: Free captions transcript (supports playlists)
• transcribe_youtube_whisper: Paid Whisper transcription (supports playlists)

Claude Desktop Setup

Easy setup:

tldw mcp setup-claude

This automatically configures Claude Desktop to use tldw. Restart Claude Desktop afterward.

After setup, ask Claude: "tldw: https://youtu.be/tAP1eZYEuKA"

ChatGPT Desktop (not yet)

ChatGPT Desktop will support MCP servers in the coming months.

CLI

Usage Examples

Single Videos

# Get transcript (free with captions)
tldw transcribe "https://youtu.be/tAP1eZYEuKA"
tldw transcribe tAP1eZYEuKA -o transcript.txt  # Save to file
tldw transcribe tAP1eZYEuKA --fallback-whisper # Use Whisper if video has no captions

# Generate summary (requires API key)
tldw "https://youtu.be/tAP1eZYEuKA"
tldw tAP1eZYEuKA -m gpt-4o-mini -p "tldr: {{.Transcript}}"

# Get video metadata
tldw metadata "https://youtu.be/tAP1eZYEuKA"
tldw metadata tAP1eZYEuKA -o metadata.json   # Save to file
tldw metadata tAP1eZYEuKA --pretty           # Format JSON output

Playlists

# Summarize entire playlist
tldw "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYDBpQnSymaectKjxCy6BYq"
tldw "https://youtu.be/tAP1eZYEuKA?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYDBpQnSymaectKjxCy6BYq" # Video from playlist

# Get playlist transcripts
tldw transcribe "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYDBpQnSymaectKjxCy6BYq"
tldw transcribe "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYDBpQnSymaectKjxCy6BYq" --fallback-whisper

# Get playlist metadata
tldw metadata "https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjYDBpQnSymaectKjxCy6BYq"

Note: Playlist processing shows progress and allows per-video Whisper confirmation for videos without captions.

Example Output

Summaries are shown as markdown and rendered in the terminal.

Configuration

Either edit the config file or use environment variables.

Config file

Find your config location:

tldw paths  # Shows config, data, and cache directories

Edit config file: config.toml

openai_api_key = "your-key"
tldr_model = "gpt-5-nano"
prompt = "tldr: {{.Transcript}}"

or edit the prompt.txt file in the config directory to change the default summary prompt.

Environment variables

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-key"
export TLDW_TLDR_MODEL="gpt-5-nano"
export TLDW_PROMPT="tldr: {{.Transcript}}"