GitHub - itsfabioroma/transcribee: Open source macOS video transcriber that builds a self-organizing knowledge base 🐝 · GitHub

Source: original

transcribee 🐝

Open source macOS transcriber for YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and local media — evolves a self-organizing knowledge base.

transcribee "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." transcribee "https://instagram.com/reel/..." transcribee "https://vt.tiktok.com/..." transcribee ~/Downloads/podcast.mp3

Over time, your ~/Documents/transcripts/ folder naturally evolves into a personal library:

transcripts/ ├── AI-Research/ │ ├── ilya-sutskever-agi-2024/ │ └── anthropic-constitutional-ai/ ├── Startups/ │ ├── ycombinator-how-to-get-users/ │ └── pmarca-founder-mode/ └── Health/ └── huberman-sleep-optimization/

Each transcript is speaker-labeled and ready to paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any LLM.

Why 🍯

I consume a lot of video content — YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, interviews. I wanted to:

• Ask questions about videos in LLMs
• Have all that knowledge searchable and organized
• Not do any manual work to maintain it

transcribee does exactly that. Transcribe once, knowledge stays forever.

Features 🪻

• Transcribes YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok, and local audio/video files
• Speaker diarization — identifies different speakers
• Auto-categorizes transcripts using Claude based on content
• Builds a knowledge library that organizes itself over time

Use with OpenClaw 🤖

transcribee is available as an OpenClaw skill. Just ask your agent to transcribe any YouTube video:

"Transcribe this video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

Install the skill

Install from ClawHub (recommended)

openclaw skills install transcribee

Or clone manually

git clone https://github.com/itsfabioroma/transcribee.git ~/.openclaw/workspace/skills/transcribee

Make sure you have the dependencies installed (brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg) and API keys configured.

Quick Start 🪺

Install dependencies (macOS)

brew install yt-dlp ffmpeg pnpm install

Configure API keys

cp .env.example .env

Add your ElevenLabs + Anthropic API keys to .env

Transcribe anything

transcribee "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..." transcribee "https://instagram.com/reel/..." transcribee "https://vt.tiktok.com/..." transcribee ~/Downloads/podcast.mp3 transcribee ~/Videos/interview.mp4

Shell alias (recommended)

Add to ~/.zshrc:

alias transcribee="noglob /path/to/transcribee/transcribe.sh"

Output 🍯

Each transcript saves to ~/Documents/transcripts/{category}/{title}/:

File | What it's for

transcript.txt | Speaker-labeled transcript — paste this into your LLM metadata.json | Video info, language, auto-detected theme

Raw JSON (optional)

For power users who need word-level timestamps and confidence scores:

transcribee --raw "https://youtube.com/watch?v=..."

This adds transcript-raw.json with the full ElevenLabs response.

How it works 🐝

1. Downloads audio from YouTube (yt-dlp) or extracts from local video (ffmpeg)
2. Transcribes with ElevenLabs (scribe_v1_experimental with speaker diarization)
3. Claude analyzes content and existing library structure
4. Auto-categorizes into the right folder
5. Saves transcript files with metadata

Requirements

• macOS (tested on Sonoma)
• Node.js 18+
• yt-dlp — brew install yt-dlp
• ffmpeg — brew install ffmpeg
• ElevenLabs API key — for transcription
• Anthropic API key — for auto-categorization

Supported formats

Type | Formats

Audio | mp3, m4a, wav, ogg, flac Video | mp4, mkv, webm, mov, avi URLs | youtube.com, youtu.be, instagram.com/reel, tiktok.com bzz bzz 🐝